Oxford Biomedica delivers record first half results
Oxford, UK – 22 September 2021: Oxford Biomedica plc (“Oxford Biomedica” or “the Group”) (LSE: Oxford Biomedica), a leading gene and cell therapy group, today announces interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2021.
John Dawson, Oxford Biomedica’s Chief Executive Officer, said:
“Everyone at Oxford Biomedica can be truly proud of what they have continued to achieve in 2021. The tireless commitment of the whole team has helped to save thousands of lives, in line with our mission, whilst gaining global recognition for our role in the fight against COVID-19. The exceptional financial results that we have reported reflect our strong progress across the business as we continue to demonstrate our world leading expertise in gene and cell therapy. As we move from strength to strength, and with rapid growth in the cell and gene therapy market, we are in a great position to maximise on the opportunities ahead, both in lentiviral vectors as well as other viral vector types and look forward to the remainder of 2021 and beyond with considerable confidence.”
FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS
– Revenue increased by 139% to £81.3 million (H1 2020: £34.0 million)
– Exceptional growth was seen in bioprocessing and commercial development, where revenues increased by 223% to £75.6 million (H1 2020: £23.4 million) largely driven by the highly successful COVID-19 vaccine agreement with AstraZeneca
– Licences, milestones & royalties were £5.7 million (H1 2020: £10.6 million), the reduction of 47% resulting from no significant licence fees arising in H1 2021, whilst H1 2020 saw the £6.2 million Juno licence fee
– Operating expenses decreased by 19% to £23.6 million (H1 2020: £29.1 million) due to the higher recovery of batch manufacturing costs which is reflected in increased cost of goods
– Operating EBITDA1 and operating profit were £27.1 million and £19.7 million respectively (H1 2020 losses of £0.4 million and £5.8 million respectively)
– Cash generated from operations was £22.2 million compared to £0.9 million consumed in H1 2020
– Cash at 30 June 2021 was £61.3 million (31 December 2020: £46.7 million), an increase of £14.6 million due to operational cash flow generated
– The Group’s capital expenditure of £3.5 million (H1 2020: £5.3 million) consisted mainly of purchases of equipment required for the manufacturing and laboratory facilities
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1Operating EBITDA (Earnings Before Net Finance Costs, Tax, Depreciation, Amortisation, fair value adjustments of assets at fair value through profit and loss, and Share Based Payments) is a non-GAAP measure often used as a surrogate for operational cash flow as it excludes from operating profit or loss all non-cash items, including the charge for share options. A reconciliation to GAAP measures is provided on page 12.
OPERATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS (including post period-end events)
COVID-19 Vaccine and Agreement with AstraZeneca
– Oxford Biomedica continues large-scale commercial manufacture of AstraZeneca’s adenovirus vector-based COVID-19 vaccine, running three manufacturing suites at 1000L scale
– In May, the Group announced that AstraZeneca had committed to an increase in the number of batches required from Oxford Biomedica in the second half of the 2021. This resulted in the Group raising its expectation for cumulative revenues from the contract to be in excess of £100 million by the end of 2021
– In the period, the Group agreed to purchase equipment provided to Oxford Biomedica by VMIC (Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre) for vaccine manufacture for £3.8 million, to enable longer term use
Boehringer Ingelheim
– In April, Oxford Biomedica announced a new three year Development and Supply agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim for the manufacture and supply of a range of viral vectors and the Group intends to manufacture GMP batches for Boehringer Ingelheim to support the development of viral vectors and viral vector products, further demonstrating growing expertise beyond lentiviral vectors
Novartis
– The Group continues its strong relationship with Novartis with global roll out of Kymriah® continuing to build momentum with more than 330 qualified treatment centres in 30 countries having coverage for at least one indication
– Indication expansion of Kymriah® continues to progress and Novartis plans to file for use in relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma in the second half of 2021 in the US and EU
Other Partnership news and strategic updates
– The Group continues to successfully progress its collaborations signed in 2020 with Juno / Bristol Myers Squibb and Beam Therapeutics with the combined revenues from these two partnerships meaningfully contributing toward the total commercial development revenues expected in the year
– In the period the Group announced that Sanofi had given notice that they intend to terminate their collaboration and licence agreement for the process development and manufacturing of lentiviral vectors to treat haemophilia. The Group expects the impact on revenues will be negligible over the coming 24 months period.
– Additionally, Orchard Therapeutics announced it would be returning the rights to its OTL-101 programme to the academic originators of that programme
– Post period end, the Group decided to extend its scope of work to all types of viral vectors. In addition, an internal review of the Group’s proprietary pipeline is nearing completion with the focus being on Oxford Biomedica-302, a 2nd generation CAR-T product, and liver gene therapy
Corporate Governance and Organisational Progress
– Oxford Biomedica remains committed to best practice corporate governance as it continues to grow and the evolution of the Board of Directors is a key part of this
– The Group has welcomed two new Board members in the year to date. In March, Professor Dame Kay Davies, a world-renowned geneticist and Professor Emeritus at Oxford University, was appointed as an Independent Non-Executive Director. Additionally, post period end, Dr. Michael Hayden, with decades of industry defining contributions and achievements, was appointed to the Group’s Board as a Non-Executive Director.
– During the period, two long standing Board members also stepped down from the board. Martin Diggle, a Partner at Vulpes Investment Management stepped down in February after nearly nine years and Dr. Andrew Heath, retired from the Board at the AGM in May, after more than eleven years of service to the Group
Analyst briefing
Management will be hosting a briefing for analysts at 13:00 BST / 8:00 EST on 22 September at 85 Gresham Street London, EC2R 7HE. There will a simultaneous live conference call with Q&A and the presentation will be available on the Group’s website at www.oxb.com
A live webcast of the presentation will be available via this link.
If you would like to dial-in to the call and ask a question during the live Q&A, please follow this link to register and receive dial-in details.
To see the interim results in full click here.
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Enquiries:
Oxford Biomedica plc
John Dawson, Chief Executive Officer
Stuart Paynter, Chief Financial Officer
Catherine Isted, Head of Corporate Development & IR
Sophia Bolhassan, Director of IR
T: +44 (0)1865 783 000 / E: ir@oxb.com
Consilium Strategic Communications
Mary-Jane Elliott / Matthew Neal, T: +44 (0)20 3709 5700
Peel Hunt (Joint Corporate Brokers):
James Steel / Dr. Christopher Golden, T: +44 (0)20 7418 8900
WG Partners (Joint Corporate Brokers):
David Wilson / Claes Spång, T: +44 (0)20 3705 9321
About Oxford Biomedica
Oxford Biomedica (LSE:Oxford Biomedica) is a leading, fully integrated, gene and cell therapy group focused on developing life changing treatments for serious diseases. Oxford Biomedica and its subsidiaries (the “Group”) have built a sector leading lentiviral vector delivery platform (LentiVector®), which the Group leverages to develop in vivo and ex vivo products both in-house and with partners. The Group has created a valuable proprietary portfolio of gene and cell therapy product candidates in the areas of oncology, CNS disorders and liver diseases. The Group has also entered into a number of partnerships, including with Novartis, Bristol Myers Squibb, Sio Gene Therapies, Orchard Therapeutics, Santen, Beam Therapeutics and Boehringer Ingelheim, through which it has long-term economic interests in other potential gene and cell therapy products. Additionally, the Group has signed a 3-year master supply and development agreement with AstraZeneca for large-scale manufacturing of the adenoviral based COVID-19 vaccine candidate, AZD1222. Oxford Biomedica is based across several locations in Oxfordshire, UK and employs more than 740 people. Further information is available at www.oxb.com