Pharming announces nine month Financial Report, Focus Reports
Release Date: 2010-10-28
The Dutch biotech company Pharming Group BV (NYSE Euronext: PHARM) published its financial report at the end of last week, for the period of the nine months ending September 30th 2010. The company, headquartered in Leiden, has several R&D sites across the Netherlands and the USA.
Pharming focuses on the development of innovative products for the treatment of genetic disorders, nutritional products and some specialty products for surgical indications. Its advanced technologies include several innovative platforms for the production of protein therapeutics together with technologies and processes for the purification and formulation of these products.
The company has also demonstrated a successful turnaround triggered by the rejection of its Rhucin product by the EMA (European Medicines Agency) in 2008, as announced by the company’s press department. The main focus of the turnaround is a restructuring of the corporate balance sheet and a streamlining of the organization focusing on cost savings.
Looking to the in-depth financials of the report, we see that the income coming from grants and fees accounts for €0.7 million – a 28.6% increase on the 2009 value of €0.5 million. Conversely, the operation loss decreased from the €21.0 million level in 2009 to €18.3million due to the combination of the aforementioned restructuring and the implementation of a strategic focus on the businesses which also resulted in the spin off of DNage. This resulted in a net loss of €34.6 million (against €23.1 million in 2009). Whilst administrative and general costs remained the same the R&D expenses declined for this year.
The payments received from Santarus (€11.7million) for the commercialization of Rhucin in North America and from SOBI (€3.0million) for the commercialization of Ruconest in the EU resulted in a decrease of operating cash outflows (€3.4million compared to €18.4million in 2009).
Furthermore, if we focus on the operations of the company together with the above agreement with Santarus for the North-American markets, we find that the company also recently announced the submission of a request for approval for Rhucin to the FDA and the arrival of a new CFO to the company – Dr. Karl Keegan – who is also member of the Board of Management.
During the last months Pharming also took the decision of increasing the production capacity of its drug Ruconest – for which the European Commission’s authorization is expected within the next two weeks – in order to satisfy future global demand while remaining competitive and improving the cost of goods. This is done through an agreement with Sanofi Chimie, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the French giant Sanofi-Aventis.
All things considered, Sijmen de Vries, the CEO of Pharming Group BV, has released a statement regarding this last financial report: “The first nine months of 2010 have been an important period for Pharming, during which we have consistently delivered on our stated targets of progressing our lead asset through the requisite developmental and regulatory pathways and maintaining tight control of our cost base. We believe that the progress we have made during the period is an endorsement of management’s strategic focus.”
| Type: | NORMAL |
| Company: | Focus Reports |
| Country: | Switzerland |