Asterand cancels share placement on back of revenue growth

Asterand has cancelled a proposed placing of 8 million shares it was to use to complete the payment of it's acquisition of Bioseek in favour of borrowing $6m from Bioseek's vendors themselves.

As part of the deal, the Cambridge firm, which provides human tissue services to the pharma and biotech industry, will pay the amount outstanding for Bioseek, approximately $8.5m, in cash, $2.5m next month, the rest through the loan notes that mature by the end of 2013.

The announcement coincided with Asterand's results for 2010 in which it revealed that Bioseek had achieved revenues of $6.4m, an increase of 68 per cent over 2009, helping push its own revenues to $21.3m, a 14 per cent increase over 2009. Pretax loss increased slightly however, from $1.9m to a loss of over $2.0m.

Asterand CEO, Martyn Coombs, said the company was now firmly placed for growth.

"We invested as much as we could into our future, for example by hosting our first ever human tissue conference and in recruiting a top-flight CSO, whilst still achieving effectively break even EBITDA," said Asterand CEO, Martyn Coombs.

"Furthermore, our 2010 revenue did not materially include any contribution from the five year up to $24 million contract win with the NCI.

"Whilst I am delighted with Asterand's achievements in 2010, I'm even more excited about our future given the scalability of our business as we aim to lead the development of the human-based solutions market."

The company's share price increased 0.9p, up 6.2 per cent to 15p.

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