Fusion Antibodies gets dragged to a loss as non-recurring items skyrocket

Contract researcher Fusion Antibodies saw revenues hit £2.7m in its last trading year but was unable to chalk up a profit.

Fusion swung to a loss of £699,941 in the trading year ended 31 March, a marked fall from the £119,954 profit turned in a year earlier, as the 41% improvement in revenue was well and truly offset by a 499% increase in non-recurring items.

EBITDA sank 54% to £132,012.

Fusion praised its full-year performance, a year characterised by the delivery of strong revenue growth, the firm's successful admission to AIM in December and the raising of additional funds to drive further organic sales growth, fund the development of new services and support its facilities and technical capacity expansion, something the firm assured investors was underway and would be completed by September 2018, earlier than planned and under budget.

The group stated that although there was a slowdown in sales growth in the second half of the year, management has "taken steps to address this", including the recruitment of further sales and marketing staff and focussing more on the geographical expansion of its customer base.

Paul Kerr, Fusion Antibodies' chief executive, said, "This year was a transformative year, securing new investment from our AIM listing, which has been applied towards expanding our facility and capacity of services to our clients."

We see the drug development sector strong and demand for seamless, high-quality, antibody engineering services integrated into expression and cell line development services," he added.

As of 1040 BST, Fusion shares had jumped 3.85% to 81p.