Placing

RNS Number : 2315Z

Angle PLC

25 May 2016

 

ANGLE plc

("ANGLE" or "the Company")

PLACING TO RAISE £10.2 MILLION

Progressing new clinical applications in prostate and breast cancers

ANGLE plc (AIM: AGL and OTCQX: ANPCY), the specialist medtech company, is pleased to announce a placing (the "Placing") of 15,815,436 new Ordinary Shares (the "Placing Shares") to raise gross proceeds of £10.2 million at a price of 64.50 pence per Ordinary Share (the "Issue Price").

The Company is focused on commercialising its patented Parsortix^TM liquid biopsy system which the Directors believe has the potential to transform the diagnosis and treatment of cancer by making it possible to harvest intact cancer cells from patient blood for analysis.

The Placing

The Company has raised £10.2 million (£9.6 million net of expenses) by way of a Placing with new and existing institutional investors, including three new major institutional investors.

Use of proceeds and rationale for the Placing

The net proceeds of the Placing will be used for the following purposes:

·      Clinical studies to demonstrate utility of the Parsortix system in:

-     ovarian cancer studies in the United States

-     prostate cancer liquid biopsy alternative to prostate biopsy

-     breast cancer liquid biopsy alternative to invasive metastatic breast cancer biopsy

·      Driving Parsortix system sales through adoption in research-use setting by investing in:

-     sales & marketing

-     research & development

-     key opinion leader projects

·      General working capital requirements and strengthening the Company's balance sheet.

The Directors believe that the Placing will enable ANGLE to build on the growing body of third party evidence on Parsortix performance and, in particular, compelling initial data that key opinion leaders have generated in:

·      Prostate cancer (Barts Cancer Institute - announced via RNS on 21 March 2016); and

·      Breast cancer (University of Southern California - announced via RNS on 18 April 2016). 

The Directors believe these new clinical applications, and the existing ovarian cancer application, cannot be addressed by competing systems using ctDNA (fragments of DNA from dead cancer cells) as the applications utilise RNA analysis and/or live whole cells.

The Company's existing key areas of development are:

·      Research use sales, which have been building since first sales were announced via RNS on 15 December 2015;

·      Ovarian cancer clinical application to detect ovarian cancer in high risk patients as announced via RNS on 28 September 2015 - the Placing will allow additional studies to be undertaken in the United States; and

·      FDA authorisation of the Parsortix system. 

Following the Placing, the Directors believe that the Company is well positioned to realise the exceptional business potential that the Parsortix system offers.

Current trading and prospects

The Company released its results for the 6 months ended 31 October 2015 on 28 January 2016 and these are available on the Company's website at www.angleplc.com.  Since 1 November 2015, the Company has continued to trade in line with Directors' expectations with revenues expected to be within the range of analysts' forecasts for the 12 months to 30 April 2016.  Together with the net proceeds of the Placing, the Company's cash resources on Admission will be approximately £13.1 million.

The pipeline for research use sales continues to build and, as separately announced today, Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute is adopting Parsortix for routine use in clinical trials and has developed "banking" protocols allowing retrospective analysis. This will generate ongoing revenues for the Company as well as being a key reference for other clinical trial customers.

Dealings and settlement on AIM

The Placing Shares have been allotted, conditional on admission to trading on AIM ("Admission"), fully paid and rank pari passu with the existing Ordinary Shares, including the right to receive, in full, all dividends and other distributions thereafter declared, made or paid after the date of issue together with all rights attaching to them and free from all liens, charges and encumbrances of any kind. Application will be made to the London Stock Exchange for the Placing Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM. Admission of the Placing Shares is expected to occur at 8.00 a.m. on 31 May 2016.

Total voting rights

Following Admission there will be 74,793,774 Ordinary Shares in issue. This number may be used by shareholders as the denominator for the calculation by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change in their interest in, the Company under the FCA's Disclosure and Transparency Rules.

ANGLE's Founder and Chief Executive, Andrew Newland, commented:

"We are delighted to have secured such strong institutional investor support as we seek to build a substantial business in the emerging multi-billion dollar liquid biopsy market.  The Placing comes after recent excellent results in prostate and breast cancer and enables the Company to develop applications in these areas, which could potentially transform the detection and treatment of these diseases."

For further information:

ANGLE plc	01483 685830
Andrew Newland, Chief Executive Ian Griffiths, Finance Director
Cenkos Securities Stephen Keys, Dr Christopher Golden (Nominated adviser) Russell Kerr, Olly Baxendale (Sales)	020 7397 8900
WG Partners David Wilson Claes Spång	020 3705 9330
FTI Consulting Simon Conway, Mo Noonan, Stephanie Cuthbert Kimberley Ha (US)	020 3727 1000 001 212 850 5612

For Frequently Used Terms, please see the Company's website on http://www.angleplc.com/the-parsortix-system/glossary/

Notes for editors

About ANGLE plc     www.angleplc.com 

ANGLE is a specialist medtech company commercialising a disruptive platform technology that can capture cells circulating in blood, such as cancer cells, even when they are as rare in number as one cell in one billion blood cells, and harvest the cells for analysis.

ANGLE's cell separation technology is called the Parsortix^TM system and it enables a liquid biopsy (simple blood test) to be used to provide the cells of interest. Parsortix is the subject of granted patents in Europe, the United States, Canada, China and Australia and three extensive families of patents are being progressed worldwide. The system is based on a microfluidic device that captures live cells based on a combination of their size and compressibility. Parsortix has a CE Mark for Europe and FDA authorisation is in process for the United States. 

ANGLE has established formal collaborations with world-class cancer centres.  These Key Opinion Leaders are working to identify applications with medical utility (clear benefit to patients), and to secure clinical data that demonstrates that utility in patient studies.  Details are available here http://www.angleplc.com/the-company/collaborators/ 

The analysis of the cells that can be harvested from patient blood with ANGLE's Parsortix system has the potential to help deliver personalised cancer care offering profound improvements in clinical and health economic outcomes in the treatment and diagnosis of various forms of cancer.

The global increase in cancer to a 1 in 3 lifetime incidence is set to drive a multi-billion dollar clinical market. The Parsortix system is designed to be compatible with existing major medtech analytical platforms and to act as a companion diagnostic for major pharma in helping to identify patients that will benefit from a particular drug and then monitoring the drug's effectiveness.

As well as cancer, the Parsortix technology has the potential for deployment with several other important cell types in the future.

ANGLE stock trades on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol AGL and in New York on the OTC-QX under the ticker symbol ANPCY. For further information please visit: www.angleplc.com

 

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