IXICO plc Strategic and Operational Update (6555X)

TIDMIXI

RNS Number : 6555X

IXICO plc

28 November 2017

28 November 2017

IXICO plc

("IXICO" or the "Company")

Strategic and Operational Update

Building scale and momentum with commercially-led growth

Notice of Final Results

IXICO plc (AIM: IXI), the digital technologies company serving neuroscience, today outlines its commercially led growth strategy as defined by Giulio Cerroni, Chief Executive Officer.

Giulio Cerroni, said: "Following my appointment in February 2017 I have completed an operational review of the Company. Below, I have set out my plan to drive IXICO forward as a high growth and scalable technology business focused on specialised areas of the digital healthcare market. I have also provided an update on our recent progress as we start to deliver on our objective to Build on our core strengths and Grow our capabilities to Scale our Company."

"I believe that IXICO is well positioned to benefit from a number of market tailwinds as the biopharmaceutical industry looks to leverage digital technologies in both drug development and the way that medical care is delivered. Therefore, in my first months my priority has been to ensure that as an organisation we have a "razor-sharp" focus on our customer's needs, supporting their business goals, better than our competitors.

"My review confirmed that our focus on neurological disorders in a growing market will support our double digit organic growth objectives. I also considered how to best leverage the Company's existing technology and commercial assets. The outcome was a commercially-led growth plan to deliver top-line growth through our existing customer relationships and targeting new biopharmaceutical customers to further progress our market penetration.

As part of our strategy we will look to supplement this organic growth with the acquisition of complementary specialist technologies, while keeping focused on our over-arching goal of an accelerated path to profitability."

Strategy

Sector focus

We will build on IXICO's trusted position in providing neuro-imaging technology enabled specialist services to the biopharmaceutical industry. We have identified three key value segments where IXICO's technology platform and capabilities are mission critical and where our digital technologies could provide considerable efficiencies and value:

   --     Selecting patients for clinical trials 
   --     Assessing safety and efficacy in every phase of drug development 
   --     Post marketing surveillance of marketed medicines 

Proven Technology

IXICO's digital technology platform has matured to a point where we have demonstrated the capability, scale and experience to provide new technology led services across all phases of drug development and into post marketing surveillance. Consequently, IXICO has become a long-term preferred partner, embedded in the drug development value chain thereby creating a springboard for growth and significant barrier to entry for our competitors.

Therapeutic area expertise

There is an urgent need to develop new and safe medicines to meet the significant unmet medical need in brain-centred neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's disease and Multiple Sclerosis. An ageing population, increasing outsourcing, increasing regulatory focus on patient safety for marketed drugs and a trend towards patient outcome-based reimbursement are all additional drivers that underpin our growth strategy.

We anticipate continued market penetration by intensifying our commercial activities beyond Alzheimer's drug trials into adjacent neurological diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease and rare diseases such as Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP).

Innovation

The biopharmaceutical industry requires streamlined, automated platforms that provide regulatory compliant data collection and analytics to provide deeper understanding of the disease, improved personalisation and post marketing surveillance of their marketed treatments. Increasing digitalisation is also providing new ways to improve the efficiency of data collection including Real World Data collection and analysis to support clinical decision making.

IXICO has a track record of innovative imaging data solutions and is in a strong position to commercialise our new digital technologies by improving the efficiency of clinical trials and supporting post marketing surveillance. Our product development plans have been aligned with our growth strategy to rapidly progress our commercialisation of new innovative solutions in:

   --     Wearable biosensors for inclusion in clinical trials as exploratory digital biomarkers 
   --     PET Image analysis in early phase clinical trials 

-- Drug safety - our first platform to support post marketing surveillance of drugs with known potential side effects such as Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy (PML) in Multiple Sclerosis

We are pleased to have announced two new wearable biosensor agreements signed in recent months, which will make a material contribution to top-line growth and our mid-term outlook.

Commercial momentum

Our strong performance in 2017 demonstrates that we are starting to deliver on our growth plan and build commercial momentum. New contracts won from both current and new customers provide early vindication of our focus on commercial execution and operational delivery. We have a growing pipeline of new contract opportunities so are well positioned to make good progress on our path to profitability.

I also believe that effective commercialisation of our new, differentiated digital technology products and services can further accelerate the growth projection of the business over the coming years.

Path to profitability

With the opportunity to considerably scale our proven model, IXICO has the potential to become a leader and partner of choice to the global biopharmaceutical industry. As outlined, we will do this by seeking to increase the rate of adoption of our digital technology platform in the three key value segments identified. We will achieve this through a commercially-led growth plan that is already demonstrating considerable momentum with both current and new Biopharma customers. We expect this momentum to accelerate with both large Pharma and an increasing number of Biotech companies and through new business partnerships with Contract Research Organizations (CRO's).

Summary

We have defined and set out our growth strategy. Simply put, it is building on our core strengths and growing our capabilities and technologies into every stage of the drug development process including post marketing surveillance in neurological disorders. To accelerate our commercially-led growth plan, we will invest in our operational delivery and our innovation roadmap to commercialise new products and services to capitalise on the inflection point reached by digital health technology.

On our path to profitability, we will seek to ensure that IXICO captures its share of the value being created by incredibly exciting and disruptive digital health tools, which are rapidly gaining adoption for remote patient monitoring in chronic health conditions.

IXICO will announce its final results for the year ended 30 September 2017 on Monday 11 December 2017.

For further information please contact:

 
 IXICO plc 
  Giulio Cerroni, Chief Executive            Tel: +44 20 
  Officer                                    3763 7499 
  Susan Lowther, Chief Financial Officer 
 
 FTI Consulting Limited (Investor          Tel: +44 20 
  Relations)                                3727 1000 
  Simon Conway/Mo Noonan 
 

About IXICO

IXICO is the digital technologies company serving neuroscience. Our mission is to transform the pursuit of improving brain health through the application of digital technologies to neuroscience. IXICO's specialist data analytics services are used by the global pharmaceutical industry to select participants for clinical trials, assess the safety and efficacy of new drugs in development and in post marketing surveillance. Our neurological disease focus includes Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and our integrated digital platform encompasses the entire drug development lifecycle. It is a scalable and secure infrastructure for the capture and analysis of regulatory compliant clinical data to enable sponsors to make rapid, better informed decisions. IXICO is also collaborating with partners to develop new companion digital health products targeted at improving patient outcomes.

More information is available on www.IXICO.com

This information is provided by RNS

The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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November 28, 2017 02:01 ET (07:01 GMT)