LONDON (SHARECAST) - Medical devices company Maelor has said its appointment of new chief executive Stephen Appelbee came after a year in which it had not progressed as well as it would have liked, largely due to a management shortage.
Finance director Paul Williams denied criticism that Maelor had overstretched itself with the number of products under development, but said the past year had been challenging.
He said: "It is wrong to say we have had too many pots on the boil as you have to have second-generation products and many of our products are inter-related. But we haven't progressed as well as we would have liked, due to a shortage of main people as much as anything else."
Appelbee has more than 20 years' pharmaceutical industry experience, with the likes of Maxim, Sequus and Glaxo. His immediate priority will be to get catheter product OptiFlo into additional territories, namely Continental Europe. It currently has 24% of the UK market.
Bard has the worldwide rights to OptiFlo. Its on-off merger with Tyco deflected attention, but Williams is optimistic that progress can be made soon.
Maelor is a virtual company and achieves a gross wholesale margin of between 30% and 40% on OptiFlo. It expects similar figures on Volplex, its plasma volume substitute.
Volplex is awaiting UK regulatory clearance. An application was submitted in October and Williams is optimistic that the wait could soon be over. Maelor has said it hopes that sales will begin in the first half of 2002. It would take about 12 weeks from approval to market.
Maelor has agreed distribution deals in Latin America and Australia. The former will go ahead following UK clearance, but Australia will require Maelor to jump through additional regulatory hoops. It will not hit the Australian market before early 2003.
While Appelbee's short-term focus will be to generate revenues from these two products, his long-term attention will be on Maelor's water-based drug delivery system and its use with the drug Propofol.
Maelor has identified up to 22 applications for this system. The top six alone have a combined market value in excess of £3bn. Williams said Maelor is assessing how to maximise income from the system. Propofol is progressing through Phase I trials and results could be published in May or June.
Maelor is also working on a unique bladder cancer treatment delivery system and a lubricant called Tendagel. But its priority remains revenue-generation from OptiFlo and Volplex.
Williams refused to comment on Maelor's cash position and whether it would need to come back to the market. At historic monthly burn rates of £213,000, it had sufficient cash at September 2001 to last 14 months.
Maelor's year-end is March 31. Its results should be published in May. Forecasts vary considerably from a loss of £1.69m anticipated by house broker Numis Securities, to a loss of £950,000 from Teather & Greenwood.
The share price has fluctuated recently on director selling, but Williams said it retains about 3,900 shareholders including several loyal institutions. They continue to await news on OptiFlo and Volplex approval with bated breath, because only then can Maelor begin to stop haemorrhaging cash.
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