Trading Statement

RNS Number : 9452B

Instem plc

16 January 2018

 

Instem plc

("Instem", the "Company" or the "Group")

Trading Statement

FY17 results in-line with market expectations with positive outlook

Instem plc (AIM: INS), a leading provider of IT solutions to the global life sciences market, announces a trading update for the year ended 31 December 2017.

Financial Highlights

Financial results for the year ended 31 December 2017 are expected to be in-line with market expectations, with net cash as at 31 December 2017 of £3.1m (2016: £4.2m).

Operational Highlights

All areas of the business made a positive contribution to the full-year financial performance, with many new client wins, as well as existing customers extending their use of Instem's products and services.

We have continued to work through a challenging period for our early phase clinical business, but financially the 12 months under review was helped by two significant new Alphadas clients placing contracts, worth a combined value of approximately US$1.25million, of which the up-front licence revenue portion was recognised in 2017.

It was particularly pleasing to see strong order intake for our Regulatory Information Management software suite, ensuring that this area performed in-line with the expectations set when the Samarind business was acquired in May 2016.

Importantly for the Regulatory Solutions business, the US Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") announced in December 2017 that the next major milestone in the FDA's adoption of the Standard for the Exchange of Non-clinical Data ("SEND") was now in force, mandating that earlier stage drug approval submissions now fall under the requirement to include SEND data packages. As expected, this has stimulated significantly more technology enabled outsourced services orders, contributing to increased SEND-related revenue in 2017 and providing a healthy backlog of orders to be delivered during 2018.

We successfully delivered the first circa £0.75m of cost savings from our mid-2017 restructuring, in line with the annualised savings of £1.5m indicated in our 2017 Half Yearly Report.

Phil Reason, CEO of Instem plc, commented: "After slower than anticipated growth in H1 2017 the second half of 2017 has been much stronger.  Revenue increases and expense reductions have delivered a strong increase in full-year profit and the sales order pipeline has once again strengthened.

"The current period has started well and we draw your attention to today's other Instem announcement outlining the award of a significant two year SEND out-sourced services contract."

For further information, please contact:

Instem plc	[phone]
Phil Reason, CEO
Nigel Goldsmith, CFO
N+1 Singer (Nominated Adviser & Broker)	[phone]
Richard Lindley James White
Walbrook Financial PR	[phone]
Paul Cornelius	[e-mail]
Helen Cresswell Sam Allen

About Instem

Instem is a leading provider of IT solutions & services to the life sciences market delivering compelling solutions for Study Management and Data Collection; Regulatory Solutions for Submissions and Compliance; and Informatics-based Insight Generation.

Instem solutions are in use by customers worldwide and enable our clients to bring life enhancing products to market faster.

Instem's portfolio of software solutions increases client productivity by automating study-related processes while offering the unique ability to generate new knowledge through the extraction and harmonisation of actionable scientific information.

Instem supports over 500 clients through offices in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Japan, China and India.

To learn more about Instem solutions and its mission, please visit instem.com.

 

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