Sales, profits surge as Abcam builds large antibody catalogue
Online antibody marketer Abcam plc (ABC.L) reported that sales increased 60% to £19.4m and pre-tax profits jumped 65% to £4.9m in the year to end June 2006 after a significant contribution from its US office.
It was the Cambridge headquartered company's first full year result since its listing on AIM in November last year.
Chairman David Cleevely (pictured) said: "We enjoyed an exciting and prosperous financial year in 2005/06, and I am equally positive about the opportunities and prospects that lie ahead."
The stock market took the result in its stride, marking Abcam's share price up 3p or 1%, to 280p, valuing the company at around £97m.
Abcam produces and distributes its own and third party research-grade antibodies. It said it had continued expanding its product range during the year and it had 23,200 products from over 200 sources available on its website at end June, up 41% from 16,500 products at end June 2005.
CEO and founder Jonathan Milner said that it was satisfying to see that operating profit at 23.7% of sales was only slightly below the 24.0% achieved in 2005. "This is despite the additional costs of being a publicly listed company and reflects the ability of the Company to scale its operations efficiently", he said.
Cash on hand also rose over the year by £10.4m to £11.9m; £9.3m of which were the proceeds of the November AIM float. But the business itself continues to be very cash generative.
Exposure
Dr Milner said that products tend to sell more the longer they have been available. "We are therefore continuing not only to publish more products but also to provide more information about the antibodies, so as to exploit this dynamic. Growth in sales has also been the result of better market penetration, brand recognition and improved distribution."
The report to the stock market makes repeated mention of a committed set of employees. Dr Milner said Abcam had attracted some very able and experienced individuals and now has 28 biochemist PhDs on staff, many with years of post-doctoral research experience. "We are committed to further enhancing the team through a new programme of staff training and development."
In his section of the report, Managing Director Jim Warwick said that central to improving business operations was the in-house IT and web-development capability, which has been steadily expanded to ensure Abcam can make scalable progress.
For example, it has introduced a robotic stock-storage and retrieval system in the UK that greatly increases stock-storage density and enables faster and more reliable processing and delivery of orders. It plans to install a second system in the US office.
It will also seek to boost further the geographic spread of sales by putting in place IT systems-architecture changes that allow the Japanese office to operate on a standalone IT platform. Japan is the third most important market for antibodies after the USA and the EU.
5th September 2006
