CAT on a roll as it turns a profit in Q1 and reports pipeline progress
The good news continues to roll in for biopharmaceutical Cambridge Antibody Technology.
It reported a switch from loss into profit for the first quarter of the current financial year on Monday following on its January news of the settlement of its long-running legal action against Abbot Laboratories and that its Humira drug, which treats the symptoms of Rheumatoid Arthritis, had become the first product from the UK biotechnology industry to achieve blockbuster status. And it said it had a "substantial pipeline".
CAT said pre-tax profit was £3.0m for the three months to end December 2005 compared with a loss of £11.3m the year before. Sales for the period surged to £14m from £2.7m previously.
Chairman Paul Nicholson said that "Clear progress has been made across our substantial pipeline in the first quarter: CAT's product candidates, CAT-354, CAT-3888 and CAT-8015 are progressing well. Our strategic alliance with AstraZeneca is meeting our highest expectations. Abbott continues to develop Humira as a potential treatment for new indications and has reported progress with ABT-874. HGSI has reported progress with LymphoStat-B and HGS-ETR1."
And the financial statement showed that while net cash and liquid resources at 31 December 2005 stood at £152.2m, about £23.4m lower than a the end of September 2005, costs were generally lower.
Net cash used in operations plus capital expenditure for the period was £8.7m (2004: £9.7m).
R & D expenses for the quarter were £8.9m, the same as the comparable quarter in 2004. External development costs were down at £2.9m (2004: £3.6m), due to lower spend on the Trabio programme which was terminated in March 2005, and a larger reimbursement of costs received from AstraZeneca in line with the increased activities in the alliance. Staff costs increased quarter on quarter in line with increased staff numbers, mainly due to the hiring of former Genencor staff.
Thanks to the settlement of the dispute with Abbot, lawyers' and other litigation fees fell from £1.9m December 2004 quarter to just to £0.1m in the latest quarter. The company also benefited from a foreign exchange credit of £0.8m from the retranslation of US dollar deposits compared with a charge of £1.1m in the comparative earlier period. These factors were instrumental in driving general and administration expenses down to £2.7m from an earlier £6.3m.
The stock market liked the result. The share price gained 13.5p to reach 677.5p by lunchtime.
