The Company is pleased to provide a trading update for the six months ending 30th June 2016.
Revenues in the first half are significantly ahead of the equivalent period in 2015 driven principally by strong sales of our TMT® reagents. We received our largest ever TMT® order and associated royalty payment in Q2, but the introduction of higher plexing solutions (new reagents which enable the parallel analysis of more biological samples) is now unlikely to occur before the end of 2017 because of the high demand for our current TMT® reagent synthesis. This is not expected to have a material impact on 2016 revenues and biomarker services contracts, particularly those using TMTcalibratorTM, remain solid.
Overall trading remains in line with expectations and the Board expects the sales momentum to continue in the second half.
Significant movements in foreign exchange since the Brexit vote on June 24th may prove to be exaggerated, but if sustained will increase both our foreign denominated revenues and the costs associated with our facility in Frankfurt; as a consequence, we expect the net effect on EBITDA to be neutral.
The trial results for LMTX reported by TauRx at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) in Toronto yesterday, showing the drug to be effective in some patients, may stimulate a shift in pharmaceutical research interest towards tau protein. We anticipate that this will increase the importance of the general diagnostic and specific drug responder tests which we are developing on behalf of Genting TauRx Diagnostic Centre and which are progressing well. We continue to discuss our CK1D inhibitors and their potential for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, and are pleased to announce that we have recently entered into a due diligence review of these compounds with a European based biopharmaceutical company focused on neurodegenerative diseases.
Launch of the CE marked stroke diagnostic array by Randox, which was previously forecast for 2016, has been deferred until the second half of 2017 in order to incorporate a new class of antibodies generated by Randox. This will not have a significant impact on 2016 revenues. These antibodies have now been validated by Randox for all targets of interest and are shown to deliver significantly improved assay performance in detection of the stroke marker proteins. Following assembly of the final panel, trials to generate registration data will be conducted and a Research Use Only product is still expected to launch ahead of the CE marked assay.
We look forward to further progress over the remainder of the year and expect to release our interim results on September 15th 2016.