hVIVO, formerly Open Orphan, has today reported a jump in revenues and earnings for the six months to the end of June and said its outlook for the full year was "extremely positive".
It raised its 2023 revenue forecast after the healthcare company reported a 52% jump in sales in the first half as demand for testing of infectious and respiratory disease therapies increased.
Drugmakers are in a race to develop vaccines and drugs to treat respiratory diseases caused by respiratory syncytial virus and Covid-19, resulting in increased demand for clinical testing of the products.
The contract research organisation now expects its annual revenue to be £55m, compared with £53m it previously expected.
It said its weighted contracted order book rose 11% year-on-year to £78m as of June 30.
Core profit more than doubled to £5.2m in the first half of the year, compared with £2.3m a year earlier.
hVIVO, formerly Open Orphan, has today reported a jump in revenues and earnings for the six months to the end of June and said its outlook for the full year was "extremely positive".
The company said the significant uptake in the use of human challenge trials (HCTs) over the past 18 months has been fuelled by increasing real-world examples of their benefits over traditional field trials.
A few recent examples that have underlined the value proposition of HCTs include Pfizer's ABRYSVO, which was one of the first RSV vaccines to get FDA approval in May after receiving Breakthrough designation.
Meanwhile, Cidara received FDA Fast Track designation for its influenza antiviral candidate in June and SAB Biotherapeutics secured FDA Breakthrough and Fast Track designation for its influenza antiviral candidate in April.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan, the chief executive of hVIVO, said the first half of 2023 delivered another period of excellent growth and progress towards the company's goal of establishing a long-term sustainable growth model.
"The increasing number of trials, as well as the growing volunteer cohorts and expanding use cases, highlights that the human challenge market is experiencing a strong growth trend that we strongly believe will continue over the long term," the CEO said.
"The outlook for the business is extremely positive, as our new state-of-the-art facility sets us up to accelerate our growth over the long term. We are delighted to increase our revenue guidance and EBITDA margin guidance for 2023," he added.
The company said the outlook for the business remains extremely positive, with revenue for 2023 fully contracted and its orderbook providing excellent visibility over revenue into late 2024, as well as a new state-of-the-art facility equipped to accelerate growth over the long term.
The hVIVO board has increased its revenue guidance to £55m for 2023 as well as increasing its EBITDA margin guidance to about.19% for 2023.
It is also the board's intention to pay a nominal annual dividend following the publication of the full year results for 2023.
