Abingdon Health (ABDX) Shares Surged 11.6% Despite Higher H2 Losses

Key points:
Abingdon Health shares surged 11.6% higher despite higher half-year losses.
The company attributed the higher losses to the cancelled DHSC contract.
However, the lateral test developer made significant progress on many fronts.

The Abingdon Health PLC (LON: ABDX) share price surged 11.6% despite its revenues falling significantly and losses growing substantially in the six months to December 2021.

The manufacturer and developer of rapid tests for multiple diseases, including COVID-19, revealed that it had secured two contract service opportunities in 2022, boosting its share price.

Also read: The Best Healthcare Stocks To Buy Right Now.

The company’s AbC-19™ Semi-Q Rapid Test, which professionals use to produce semi-quantitative results using a line intensity scorecard, was awarded the CE mark during the six months.

Abingdon’s revenues fell to £1.7 million compared to the £7.7 million recorded in a similar period in 2020. The company’s operating losses surged to £4.8 from £0.1 million in 2020. The firm attributed the lower revenues to the DHSC contract termination.

However, investors are hopeful that the DHSC shall honour the non-binding agreement signed with Abingdonw Health and pay the outstanding amount worth £8.45 million.

Abingdon also said that its AppDx® smartphone app solution for lateral flow tests had achieved a critical technical performance milestone after being granted another UK patent for the underlying technology. As a result, the app is now ready for commercial use.

Investors were impressed by the progress made by Abingdon Health, including the successful transfer of the Vatic Health Ltd antigen test, which is now ready to be manufactured. The company has so far manufactured three technical transfer batches for Vatic Health.

Abingdon expects to ship the final technical transfer batch to Vatic later in March before beginning the commercial manufacturing of the tests. Vatic applied for Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) from the US FDA earlier this month.

The company revealed that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Deepverge to manufacture lateral flow tests for its Life Science and Modern Water divisions. The MoU covers the development, manufacturing and commercialisation of the lateral tests.

Abingdon Health further announced another MoU with Vatic Ltd to develop, manufacture, and commercialise lateral flow self-tests targeting infectious diseases, with the first test targeting influenza.

The company noted that its multiple contracts resulted from the integration of its lateral flow contract development and manufacturing activities, which has made it a full-service company that can develop and manufacture proprietary lateral flow tests for clients.

Chris Yates, Abingdon Health’s CEO, commented: “Our focus remains on providing our customers with a first-class lateral flow contract development and manufacturing service. We have invested significantly in our operational infrastructure over the past 18 months, and more importantly, we have advanced our technical capability in developing, transferring and manufacturing lateral flow tests across an increasingly diverse range of use cases.”

Adding:

“We believe we are uniquely positioned in Europe to provide prospective customers with an efficient and expert technical transfer service to transition their lateral flow products into manufacture. With supply chain challenges remaining a major issue for many of our prospective customers, we are seeing significant interest in on-shoring and outsourcing lateral flow test manufacture.”

*This is not investment advice. Always do your due diligence before making investment decisions.

Abingdon Health share price.