Director/PDMR Shareholding

RNS Number : 0325P

Avacta Group PLC

04 June 2020

 

04 June 2020

Avacta Group plc

("Avacta" or "the Group" or "the Company")

Director/PDMR Shareholdings

Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer^® biotherapeutics and reagents, announces it has granted a total of 6,321,880 options over ordinary shares of 10p each ("Ordinary Shares") to certain directors the Company (the "Options").

These Options were granted under the Company's Long Term Incentive Plan*, Avacta Group plc Executive Share Option Scheme as set out below:  

Director	Position	Number of Options granted	Exercise Price
Alastair Smith	CEO	868,260*	17.25p
Alastair Smith	CEO	4,000,000**	10p
Tony Gardiner	CFO	453,620*	17.25p
Tony Gardiner	CFO	1,000,000**	10p

* The vesting conditions are split 50% based on share price performance and 50% based on the achievement of significant commercial and technical milestones over a period up to 31 December 2021, which represents the second tranche of the 2019 LTIP award, with the exercise price based on the closing mid-market price on 31 December 2019.

** The vesting conditions are based on the share price performance over the three year period up to 31 December 2022, which represents the 2020 LTIP award, with the exercise price based on the ordinary share nominal value of 10p.

Following these awards and the lapsing of some historic share awards which had not met a share price condition in January 2020, the total number of options held by the directors were as set out below:

Director	Position	Number of Options held
Alastair Smith	CEO	5,908,525
Tony Gardiner	CFO	2,057,521

Eliot Forster, Non-executive Chairman, said:

"Following the significant developments within the Group during the course of 2020, I am pleased to confirm that the Remuneration Committee has been able to conclude the changes to the equity arrangements of Alastair and Tony.  These arrangements continue to align the interests of the Executive Directors with the longer-term interests of our shareholders through stretching targets on commercial and operational delivery combined with share price performance."

- Ends -

For further information from Avacta Group plc, please contact:

Avacta Group plc Alastair Smith, Chief Executive Officer Tony Gardiner, Chief Financial Officer	Tel: [phone] www.avacta.com
finnCap Ltd (Nomad and Joint Broker) Geoff Nash / Giles Rolls / Teddy Whiley - Corporate Finance Tim Redfern - ECM	Tel: [phone] www.finncap.com
Zeus Capital Limited (Joint Broker) John Goold / Rupert Woolfenden - Corporate Broking	Tel: [phone] www.zeuscapital.co.uk
Yellow Jersey  (Financial Media and IR) Sarah Hollins Henry Wilkinson Zyme Communications  (Trade and Regional Media) Katie Odgaard	Tel: [phone] [e-mail] Tel: [phone] [e-mail]

About Avacta Group plc (www.avacta.com)

Avacta is developing novel cancer immunotherapies combining its two proprietary platforms - Affimer^® biotherapeutics and pre|CISION™ tumour targeted chemotherapy. With this approach, the Company aims to address the lack of a durable response to current immunotherapies experienced by most patients. The Company's therapeutics development activities are based in Cambridge, UK.

The Company benefits from near-term revenues generated from Affimer reagents for diagnostics, bioprocessing and research, through a separate business unit based in Wetherby, UK.

The Affimer platform is an alternative to antibodies derived from a small human protein. Despite their shortcomings, antibodies currently dominate markets worth in excess of $100bn. Affimer technology has been designed to address many of these negative performance issues, principally: the time taken, and the reliance on an animal's immune response, to generate new antibodies; poor specificity in many cases; large size and cost. 

Avacta's pre|CISION platform, activates chemotherapy only in the tumour, thereby limiting systemic exposure and damage to healthy tissues, and thus improving the overall safety and therapeutic potential of these powerful anti-cancer treatments. 

By combining these two platforms the Company is building a wholly owned pipeline of novel cancer therapies with the aim of creating effective treatments for all cancer patients including those who do not respond to existing immunotherapies. Avacta expects to take its first drug, a pre|CISION targeted form of the standard-of-care Doxorubicin, into the clinic later in 2020 or early 2021.

Avacta has established drug development partnerships with pharma and biotech, including with Moderna Therapeutics Inc., a collaboration with LG Chem to develop treatments for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases worth up to $310m, a partnership with ADC Therapeutics to develop Affimer drug conjugates and a joint venture in South Korea with Daewoong Pharmaceuticals to develop the next generation of stem cell therapies that incorporate Affimer immuno-modulators. Avacta actively seeks to license its proprietary platforms in a range of therapeutic areas.

The Avacta diagnostics business unit works with partners world-wide to develop Affimers for evaluation by those third parties with the objective of establishing royalty bearing license deals. The Company is also developing a small in-house pipeline of Affimer-based diagnostic assays for licensing.

The information communicated in this announcement is inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation 596/2014.

Notification and public disclosure of transactions by persons discharging managerial responsibilities and persons closely associated with them

1.	Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities / person closely associated
a)	Name	Alastair Smith
2.	Reason for the Notification
a)	Position/status	Chief Executive Officer
b)	Initial notification/Amendment	Initial notification
3.	Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor
a)	Name	Avacta Group Plc
b)	LEI	2138009U3EG31OPMGH36
4.	Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; and (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted
a)	Description of the Financial instrument, type of instrument	Options over Ordinary Shares
	Identification code	GB00BYYW9G87
b)	Nature of the transaction	Grant of Options over Ordinary Shares
c)	Price(s) and volume(s)	LTIP Exercise Price(s) Volume(s) 17.25 pence 868,260 LTIP Exercise Price(s) Volume(s) 10.00 pence 4,000,000
d)	Aggregated information: · Aggregated volume · Price	Grant of 868,260 options over Ordinary Shares at an exercise price of 17.25p Grant of 4,000,000 options over Ordinary Shares at an exercise price of 10p
e)	Date of the transaction	04 June 2020
f)	Place of the transaction	Outside a trading venue

1.	Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities / person closely associated
a)	Name	Tony Gardiner
2.	Reason for the Notification
a)	Position/status	Chief Financial Officer
b)	Initial notification/Amendment	Initial notification
3.	Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor
a)	Name	Avacta Group Plc
b)	LEI	2138009U3EG31OPMGH36
4.	Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; and (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted
a)	Description of the Financial instrument, type of instrument	Options over Ordinary Shares
	Identification code	GB00BYYW9G87
b)	Nature of the transaction	Grant of Options over Ordinary Shares
c)	Price(s) and volume(s)	LTIP Exercise Price(s) Volume(s) 17.25 pence 453,620 LTIP Exercise Price(s) Volume(s) 10.0 pence 1,000,000
d)	Aggregated information: · Aggregated volume · Price	Grant of 453,620 options over Ordinary Shares at an exercise price of 17.25p Grant of 1,000,000 options over Ordinary Shares at an exercise price of 10p
e)	Date of the transaction	04 June 2020
f)	Place of the transaction	Outside a trading venue

 

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