Interim Results

Unaudited interim results for the six months ended 31st December 2015.

Bioventix plc (BVXP) (“Bioventix” or “the Company”), a UK company specialising in the development and commercial supply of high-affinity monoclonal antibodies for applications in clinical diagnostics, announces its unaudited interim financial results for the six-month period ending 31 December 2015.

Highlights

Turnover: +23% to £2.37M (H2 2014: £1.93M)
Profit before tax: +33% to £1.67M (H2 2014: £1.26M)
Profit after tax: +31% to £1.40M (H2 2014:£1.07M)
Cash at 31 Dec: +0.81M to £4.61M (2014: £3.80M)
Interim dividend per share: +50% to 16.5p (March 2014: 11p)

Chairman and Chief Executive’s Statement

We are pleased to report the interim results for the half-year ended 31 December 2015. Revenues for the half-year period of £2.37M (H2 2014:£1.93M) were up 23% and profits before tax of £1.67M (H2 2015 £1.26M) were up 33% for the comparable period in the previous year.

In line with expectations, the core business has remained robust with additional growth coming from our vitamin D antibody vitD3.5H10. Revenue from this product – now our leading source of revenue – has continued to grow from antibody sales and from royalties as customer products (assays for vitamin D deficiency) reach markets around the world. The “roll-out” of our customers’ vitamin D products which tend to launch initially in the EU and later in the US has continued and is advanced. Nevertheless, we still anticipate additional modest growth from a few additional customers over the next year or so.

Autumn 2017 is outside the current reporting period. However, in 18 months’ time, around 15% of the Company’s revenue will be lost due to the expiry of payments relating to one of our first license agreements. The timing of this expiry is coincident with the expected launch of a high sensitivity troponin assay for heart attack diagnostics that uses Bioventix antibodies. The timing of our customer’s troponin product launch is a matter under their control but our understanding is that launch is expected to take place during 2017, most likely in the EU market first. Our expectation at this time is that the dynamics of the revenue shift from these two events will not adversely affect overall sales or cash generation. We will report again on this important issue later in the year.

Cash flows remained strong and our cash balance increased significantly to £4.61M at 31 December 2015 (2014: £3.80M) despite markedly increased dividend payments during 2015.

Over the previous years, the Board has followed a cautious dividend policy that embraces continuity in the absence of special dividends and it is the intention of the Board to continue with this policy into the future. We are able to announce a first interim dividend of 16.5p (2015: 11p). The shares will be marked ex-dividend on 7^th April and become payable on 22^nd April to all shareholders on the register at the close of business on the 8^th April. This represents a similar step increase as was reported for the dividend paid in October 2015 (21.6p) compared to October 2014 (14.4p). Taken together these two recent payments total 38.1p and represent a new base level from which future dividends will be considered.

During the reporting period, we developed our relationship with CardiNor AS, a new company that has evolved out of Akershus University Hospital and the University of Oslo. CardiNor has been set up to continue the validation of the novel cardiac biomarker secretoneurin and to demonstrate the utility of secretoneurin in the field of heart diagnostics, and to handle the commercialisation process. Whilst working in the field of an unproven diagnostic biomarker represents a higher risk if compared to established biomarkers in current use, we are impressed by the quality of the basic research within the University and hospital groups in Norway. Over the last year or so, we have made some excellent antibodies that we believe will be helpful in creating an assay for the research market that will help elucidate the utility of secretoneurin.

In our view, the CardiNor collaboration has great merit as it combines the excellent research of the Norwegian groups together with the antibody and assay expertise of Bioventix. We believe this to be a good use of the Company’s scientific and financial resources as we continue to develop our pipeline of products for the future.

There have been no significant staff changes during the reporting period. The output of the lab in terms of antibody creation, antibody production and technology development has been of the usual high standard and we would like to take this opportunity to thank all the operating staff for their contribution to this result.

With a good first half of the year behind us, we look forward to the rest of the financial year with confidence

P J Harrison
Chief Executive Office

I J Nicholson
Non-Executive Chairman

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