C4X losses widen as its revenue drops to nil

Drug discovery company C4X Discovery Holdings announced a fall in revenue to nil in its full-year results on Tuesday, from £7.06m in 2018, which the board said as driven entirely by the Indivior licensing agreement in that year.

The AIM-traded firm said research and development expenses increased 51% for the year ended 31 July to £10.59m, which it said reflected its planned increase in drug discovery investment and the continued development of lead drug candidates.

Its total loss after tax was £10.91m, or 18.82p per share, widening from £1.14m or 2.34p per share in 2018.

A total of £17.7m gross was raised in two tranches during the year, with the first being £10.1m before expenses in October 2018 from both new and existing investors, and the second being £7.6m before expenses via a placing, subscription by directors and open offer post-period end in November.

“2019 was a year of building out the C4X Discovery portfolio and advancing our drug discovery programmes to create a sustainable pipeline of potential revenue-generating assets,” said chief executive officer Dr Clive Dix.

“As momentum continues to build across our key programmes, we remain confident in our business strategy with partner discussions to date confirming commercial interest for our NRF-2 programme.

“This follows our already out-licensed Orexin-1 programme which is progressing to clinical studies with Indivior.”

Dix said now in 2020, the company would continue to advance the next wave of potential out-licensing candidates, and to drive forward partnering deals to create value for its shareholders.

“With the business in a strong position, we are excited by our future prospects as we focus on building our pioneering drug discovery company towards sustainability.”

At 0947 GMT, shares in C4X Discovery Holdings were down 6.45% at 14.5p.