Trading Update and Change of Adviser

RNS Number : 7806G

Venn Life Sciences Holdings PLC

08 November 2018

 

November 8, 2018

Venn Life Sciences Holdings Plc

("Venn" or the "Company")

Trading Update and Change of Adviser

Venn Life Sciences ("Venn") an Integrated Drug Development Partner offering a combination of drug development expertise and clinical trial design and management to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device organisations announces a trading update.

Following a significant delay we are pleased to communicate that we have now received confirmation that we are to secure full service contract work valued at €3.4m for our Clinical Research Services (CRS) group. This new business comes from an existing client operating in the orphan disease area and the awarding of this work is testament to the quality of of the CRS group's performance on previous development programs. Activities are scheduled to commence in November and are estimated to run for circa eighteen months with relatively even billing over the project lifetime. This particular client is committed to multiple development programs and we believe we are well positioned to secure additional programs of a similar scale in the coming months.

While positive, the time taken to secure these important full service contracts and the impact that these have had during the intervening period, has had a negative impact on project utilisation within the CRS group. Therefore, while this new business represents a positive change in fortunes, we will only benefit from circa two months' contribution in 2018. Accordingly our second half year performance has been impacted by this delay, with the result that we are likely to report 2018 results below market expectations.

Given these delays we estimate that second half service fee income is unlikely to exceed that of the first half (€7.4m). While we have tightly managed overhead in recent months, we have remained committed to keeping our billable resource base intact in anticipation of these and other new project wins, the cost impact of this is such that we estimate second half EBITDA will be below the first half (EBITDA: €0.2m) resulting in an overall EBITDA deficit for the full year.

Furthermore, as part of an overall cost management program we have consolidated our adviser relationships and continue to look at PLC costs. Currently Cenkos remain as our Nominated Advisor and Co-Broker with Davy as ESM Advisor and Co-Broker.

The information contained within this announcement is deemed to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014. Upon the publication of this announcement, this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.

Enquiries:

Venn Life Sciences Holdings Plc
Allan Wood, Non-Executive Chairman
Tony Richardson, Chief Executive Officer	Tel: [phone]
Cenkos (Nominated Advisor and Co-Broker) Mark Connelly/Steve Cox (Corporate Finance)	Tel: [phone]
Davy (ESM Adviser and Co-Broker)
Fergal Meegan / Matthew de Vere White (Corporate Finance)		Tel: [phone]

About Venn Life Sciences: Venn Life Sciences is an Integrated Drug Development Partner offering a unique combination of drug development expertise and clinical trial design and management to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device organisations. Venn have dedicated operations in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Ireland with partners across Europe and the US.

Further information in relation to Venn Life Sciences www.vennlifesciences.com

 

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