ABDXF (ABDXF) Q4 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Abingdon Health Plc Final Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to Executive Chairman, Chris Hand. Good morning to you.

Good morning. Thank you, Alex, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the presentation of Abingdon Health's financial year '26 results for the year ended 30th of June. I'm Chris Hand, Executive Chairman, and I'm joined by Tom Hayes, CFO. So we have a disclaimer, which we'll move through to the next slide. I'm Chris Hand. I'm one of the founders of Abingdon Health, which we started in 2008. I'm Executive Chairman of Abingdon Health for the past 18 months or so, and I've been previously non-Exec Chairman of the company. My co-founder, Chris Yates is currently CCO and has moved to -- looking after our U.S.A. operations. But in terms of my background, it's 30 years in the medical diagnostics industry, founded a company called Cozart plc, which is also on AIM, which specialized in rapid diagnostic tests, similar to those we now manufacture Abingdon Health. And that company was sold to Concateno plc in 2007 and is now part of Abbott. So my background is a development and commercialization of rapid diagnostic and -- in vitro diagnostic tests.

Okay. Thanks, Chris. Tom Hayes, I'm the CFO of Abingdon Health. My background is chartered accountancy. I've worked across a range of industry and corporate finance roles. Previously, I was Finance Director of another unlisted group of companies, and I joined Abingdon in January 2025.

So the agenda for the presentation today will give a brief overview of who we are as Abingdon Health Group and financial year '26 at a glance. Tom will run through the financial review and then hand back to me [indiscernible] medium term. And then we're happy to answer any questions that you may have, please submit those as we go. So in terms of who we are, Abingdon Health is an end-to-end partner for the development through to manufacture, regulatory approval and delivery of rapid diagnostic tests. That's been our background. Increasingly, since acquisitions we made 2 years ago, that full service offering extends to other areas of MedTech via the MedTech regulatory and quality consultancy firms we bought 2 years ago, those being CS Life Sciences and IVDeology. And those 2 companies are now increasingly incorporated into our full service offering for our customers. We operate from 3 sites. Headquarters are in York, the biotech campus, where we do all the activities from design for development through to manufacture, regulatory and delivery. We have 2 other sites. The site we have in Doncaster south of York is Abingdon Analytical, which operates an independent performance evaluation service and acts really as a bridge between product development and regulatory approval. That facility, we've invested in further over the past year, and we will explain as we go through what we're doing at Abingdon Analytical. And then the third site is important for us, the Abingdon Health USA facilities, which are on the University Research Park in Madison, Wisconsin. And again, we'll tell you more about how we're expanding that site as we move through the presentation. In terms of financial year '26, this slide gives an overview at a glance. So our revenue was up 30% over the previous year to GBP 11 million, up from GBP 8.4 million in financial year '25. Both years had additional income from grant funding, and that relates to the project we're running with the Institut Pasteur and others to develop tests for malaria. So there was an additional GBP 0.3 million in the year just we're presenting today versus GBP 0.2 million in '25. Our gross margin has increased to 47.1% from 44%, driven largely by a mix of how the revenue is mixed. And it was a milestone second half of the year for us in that we achieved an adjusted EBITDA profit of GBP 0.2 million. So that was a big milestone for us and it illustrates that our business model coming through and working that our infrastructure is in place to create that type of movement. And then cash at the end of the financial year was at GBP 2.9 million. That was following a GBP 3.2 million net placing we did in the autumn of '25. So yes, and it's a good year for us moving towards that second half profit was an important point for us. And at this point, I'll hand over to Tom Hayes, who will run through the financial review.

Thank you, Chris. Okay. So this slide just gives a bit more detail on the numbers Chris has just run through. So really, as per the summary we just covered the key numbers on here for us, the revenue where we've had 30% reported revenue growth up to GBP 11 million or GBP 11.3 million, including some grant funded project income, which we have to show on an other income line. The second key number is the gross margin, where we've got an improved margin year-on-year. And then the third one is the adjusted EBITDA line, where we've seen some operating leverage come through in line with higher revenues, the GBP 1.5 million loss for the year overall, but there was significant weighting towards H2 on the back of higher revenues, where we did make a small adjusted EBITDA profit in the half, which was a great milestone for us. Okay. So just moving on to the next slide. So we've got a breakdown of revenue just by segment. These are the different activities we do within the business. This is really showing that most of the growth was driven by contract development revenues, which is on back of a number of significant programs we've announced over the past 12, 18 months. There's some modest growth on the regulatory services side as well. Contract manufacturing was relatively flat year-on-year, but we expect over time that should step up as some of these bigger development programs progress through regulatory approvals and into manufacture. And then finally, just products, we have split out separately. That's a mixture of some white label products that we make and also the Abingdon Simply Test products where we have noted in these results that we will carry on doing those as a B2B product, but we're stepping back from the B2C sales through our website, which was quite a small number for us, and it's not really part of the key strategy moving forward. Okay. So this slide is quite key, just explaining how the -- how last year played out. We've got significant weighting of revenue towards H2 in FY '26. The reason for that, H1, the challenge for us was really securing and starting some of the programs that we've been announcing. H2 was very much full steam ahead with significantly higher revenues as a whole, particularly on the contract development side. And that has flowed into the adjusted EBITDA profit in H2. The reason for that is a lot of the cost base is fairly fixed in terms of the people we've got in the business and the premises that we've got in the U.K. and in the U.S.A. And so really having delivered higher revenues in H2, that's how we've got to the overall profitability. Okay. And then this slide is just kind of zooming out a bit and giving more of a view on the 4-, 5-year view. It's showing that the reason we started with FY '22 is that's the first year where we're taking out some COVID revenues where the business has been kind of rebuilt around kind of broader contract development and regulatory manufacturing piece. And it's showing that on that 4-, 5-year view, we've had significant revenue growth. We've got a compound revenue growth of 41% from '23 through to '26. And the contract development revenues is a significant part of that -- the revenue growth over those years, and that's all organic growth. We did also acquire the 2 regulatory consultancy businesses, CS Life Sciences and IVDeology in FY '24 or just early in FY '25, which is quite a big part of regulatory growth. But overall, we've got significant compound growth over this period. Okay. And then this final slide is just a bit more detail on the cash movement between June '25 and June '26. It's just showing that we -- obviously, we did the last fundraise we did in October '25, which was for both the expansion of our U.S. facilities and also for working capital. And we have that cash coming in. And we've got an operating cash outflow of GBP 1.6 million, which is not dissimilar to the adjusted EBITDA loss for the period. And -- but again, the split of that is quite similar to the adjusted EBITDA line and most of that outflow was in H1. There was a modest outflow in H2. And so yes, really showing that cash and EBITDA moved fairly similarly. And at the end of June, we had GBP 2.9 million of cash in the bank.

Thank you, Tom. The next section, I'll cover on our operations and give some insight into some of the contracts we're actively working on the increased capability we've created and some of the expansions we're doing in the U.S. but also in the U.K. at our York site and Analytical. So as far as contracts are concerned, we've spoken previously about our full service offering now allowing us to gain larger contracts, which give us greater visibility of revenue over longer periods of time. Inevitably, some of these will move and be replaced by others. But for us as managing the company, it gives us a lot of insight as to what we need to continue to operate, as I say, over a longer time period and have a greater visibility of that revenue. So some examples we put on here. 4TEEN4 is a German biotech pharmaceutical company that we work with. They're happy for us to name them as a partner. And we've been doing a lot of work with them developing a quantitative lateral flow test, which is acting as a companion diagnostic for their therapy, the therapy being to help cardiac shock and other types of shocks. And then the diagnostic test is being developed alongside the pharmaceutical to ensure that companion diagnostics is ready at the same time as the pharmaceutical. Other programs of a similar size, you can see illustrated on this slide, the $3.5 million clinical self-test program is well underway, and that's been project managed through technical support from Abingdon, including some technical work being done at our York site. And then the top right, the U.S.A multiplex test system. We unfortunately have to talk quite vaguely about some of these contracts and that the customer has confidentiality agreements with us. But this is just an example of a similar size contract being signed end of last year at this time to be run out of our U.S.A. Madison laboratories. And that's similarly to -- from a technology point of view, moves things from a simple yes, no to a semi-quantitative multiplex system, in other words, measuring many analytes at the same time. And that program will move through financial year '27. There's a series of contracts bottom left, which we announced earlier in the year. Some of those are going through and completed. Others are being reviewed by the customer, some may continue, some may not. But I think importantly, because of this visibility we have with contracts, the way we forecast things would take care of -- we basically only forecast contracts if we're sure they're progressing. So -- but as I said earlier, as we move through working with different customers, some programs will continue, some will fade away. But importantly, we've got a good visibility of the whole due to this larger service offering. An interesting one in the middle -- bottom middle. There is a product we've developed with a company called UpFront Diagnostics. The product is called LVOne, and it's a test for triaging stroke. It's currently being piloted across the London Ambulance Service. And the idea of the test is to triage whether the patient has suffered a large vessel occlusion, which is the worst sort of stroke, which requires different treatment and potentially to be directed to a different health center than a different sort of stroke. So that's a really interesting product that's coming through, as I say, [indiscernible] London Ambulance Service in the UKCA market. The idea of this slide is to illustrate hopefully to you how the integrated full-service offering that we now give to our customers is allowing us to gain these larger contracts and take things from feasibility right through to manufacture [indiscernible]. In terms of the capability, 2 key areas of growth for us, which were helped by the fundraise we did last autumn. Abingdon Analytical, which is our Doncaster performance evaluation laboratory. That opened in December 2024, so less than 2 years ago. It generates performance data that bridges between product development and regulatory approval. We're also offering a CRO service from that site now as some of these products come through and require clinical testing. We're managing that from the Doncaster site. And importantly, we gained our first UKAS accreditation to a standard known as 17025, which is the laboratory testing standard, which illustrates that the highest level of laboratory work is being performed from the Abingdon Analytical site, which obviously gives our customer confidence that the results come from that lab with a high quality. So that's an area we've put effort into expanding and that's -- we've got a lot of activity going on in the Doncaster lab. And then similarly with Madison, Wisconsin, where we have Abingdon Health USA, which we established 1.5 years ago, and we've now added manufacturing to that site from now basically. So the opening happened very recently, end of September, and we'll be adding the appropriate quality standards to that site. So basically, our customers can have products developed and manufactured in both the U.K. or the U.S.A. both to the same quality system and the same standard of work. So Madison has just been expanded to add a manufacturing hub. We did that from the pull from our customer base. So we continue to expand and have most of our activity from York, but Madison is an important site for us now as we're gaining an increasing number of U.S.-based customers who want both the development work and now increasingly the manufacturing work to be done from the U.S.A. And this began before [indiscernible] that we're finding increasingly if a customer is operating by U.S. grant funding, then that funding needs to be used in the U.S.A. And similarly, they want U.S.A. manufacturing made in the U.S.A., which we can now offer from our Madison site, which is University Research Park in Madison. And Madison is a very -- sorry, Wisconsin is a very strong health tech state. They've been very supportive of us. And to the extent that we've been certified for state support for up to $370,000 based around recruitment of people in that site. So as I said previously, we're adding the appropriate accreditations to the site. And because of the interest we've gained certainly in Madison and the wider Wisconsin community and beyond that, we've allowed our AIM-listed shares to be traded on the OTCQB in New York, and that's something we started earlier this year. It's a very low-cost way of letting our shares be more widely traded in the U.S.A. So our strategy going forward this year and beyond, we are consolidating our activities into 3 pillars to give a more coherent offering to our customer base and indeed to investors. And we've divided things into 3 pillars, which you can see illustrated on this slide with Abingdon Diagnostics being the original core lateral flow development and manufacturing element of our offering. It also includes new technologies, which we can add our development skills to, which are very similar to the lateral flow skills such as biosensors and other new IVD methods. AI and software as a medical device is something we've been offering as a consultancy by the companies we acquired a couple of years ago, and we're finding a lot more incoming interest to add this consultancy service alongside our product development and other MedTech consultancy. So you can see AI and SaMD featured in both Abingdon Diagnostics and Abingdon AI and MedTech, which is the third pillar here. And that's basically the same people operating across those 3 pillars. So the Abingdon AI and MedTech is the core of our MedTech consultancy, which goes beyond in vitro diagnostics. And then Abingdon Analytical in the center there bridges between the 2 actually, and it also allows performance evaluation and things like bioburden testing, which apply to other medical devices in addition to in vitro diagnostics. And then the CRO clinical research offering is complementary to the test house and performance evaluation offering as we're bringing products through from development to testing and regulatory approval, we're now also offering that clinical activity too. And importantly, we're promoting this as a one-stop shop, if you like. So one having an integrated consultancy across all these 3 pillars. So those 3 pillars are backed by these 6 priorities in terms of our strategy. Our people are very important to us. We develop our people and the culture and their capability is important as we continue to grow that our people grow with the company. We need to grow efficiently. So we need to be constantly managing our costs and as we scale up, which is a key feature of our activities. And as I've just mentioned, outside world base as one group and then a clear identity as an in vitro diagnostic and MedTech consultancy. AI and software as a medical device is very important and increasingly so -- and it crosses all that we do. We're getting an increasing number of interest and incoming inquiries about our ability to help incorporate AI and software as a medical device into our current offering. And as I said, we've already got skilled people in that field within the company. The new tech services, again, leverages what we have in place. If we can develop and manufacture lateral flow test, there's an easy pivot towards other similar rapid diagnostic tests such as biosensors and microfluidics, which we have experience in the company doing. And then the key across all of this is to grow our revenue and profits in the U.K. and the U.S. and obviously applying that globally, but from our 2 bases in the U.K. and the U.S.A. For the outlook, as we said earlier, the contracts we've announced during the calendar year provide visibility to us to allow us to manage the company efficiently, giving us a solid base on which to build. And we've got a very good pipeline of work coming through. Q1 revenue was lower than we anticipated due to some delays in programs, nothing that's gone away, but things such as specialty reagents not being available from a customer, for example, or another example, which could create a delay in revenue may be the customer altering the specification when we get to a certain milestone, which would [indiscernible], for example, adding additional work, but it slows down the full program. So again, nothing that's gone away that can potentially slow revenue and therefore, make our half 2 more heavily weighted than half 1. Financial year '27 revenue and adjusted EBITDA will be therefore moved towards the second half. And I mentioned the integration of our regulatory and quality MedTech consultancy offering. As part of that restructuring, we'll be moving towards that integrated offering to a higher-value IVD and MedTech and AI work, which will [indiscernible] reintegration will cause some short-term revenue impact but a smaller impact on EBITDA and we would expect that to pick back up pretty quickly. But for now, we've lowered the revenue from that element of our activities. The Board expects an improved EBITDA position for '27 versus '26. And importantly, our infrastructure is largely in place. Our priority is delivery of existing programs and converting our strong pipeline on that existing infrastructure base. So to summarize, we have good growth in the year, up 32% if we include the grant income from both years, '25 and '26 or 30% if we don't. The first half -- it was our first half, sorry, of adjusted EBITDA profit. So that was an important milestone for us. And our multiyear contracts that we're obtaining now based upon the full service offering that we provide are allowing larger multiyear programs to allow us to have this greater visibility of activities. Our capability is where we want it to be, both in the U.K. and the U.S. from a development, manufacturing and regulatory performance evaluation, the whole process. And adding the UKAS accredited laboratory is important. And in terms of numbers, we expect to continue the revenue to continue to increase, and we expect EBITDA performance to improve over last year into this. And at that point, I'll just have one more slide to those who haven't seen this already. We're offering an open day on the 21st of October at our York Biotech Campus facilities. There are still places if those listening would like to attend, we'll be introducing members of the team doing a tour of our facilities and looking at some of the products we make. So if anyone is interested in attending that, please do register because we need names of people. So you can see the place to register your interest abingdon@walbrookpr.com. So please do that. And yes, we look forward to seeing those of you that can make it in York.

Thank you very much indeed for your presentation. I will now [indiscernible] for the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] At this point, if I may, I will hand back to you to take us through the Q&A session, and I'll pick up at the end.

Thank you, Alex. We've had a couple of questions submitted online. So I'll start with [indiscernible]. With the development revenues increasing, what's the time frame for this transition into meaningful manufacturing revenues?

Yes. We've got a lot of programs which are moving -- the way that the development moves through to manufacturing, there are various stages to that. So for example, once a product is finished being optimized, it moves through to what we call technical transfer, where we manufacture 3 batches of the product at increasing sizes. And then the customer alongside us, if that's how we're working, will do the performance evaluation and clinical testing of those products, and that can take several months to do. So we would expect an increasing number of those products to come through to manufacturing this year. But obviously, they'll start at a lower level, and then that will pick up as they gain traction with their own commercial activities. So it's a key thing for us to do. We've got a couple of programs moving through the same way in the U.S. as we do in the U.K. So yes, it's a question of getting things through the regulatory approval process as well as just completing the development.

Thank you, Chris. And then the next question from Ben. What revenue contribution do you see from the expanded U.S. facility in the coming months? And does the profile look -- what does the profile look like further out?

Yes, sure. Yes, it's a big growth area for us in the U.S.A. We don't publicly split out the revenue by that business unit. But I mean, essentially, they were up and running in early 2025, and we -- last month just kind of officially opened the manufacturing side of things. So I mean, I think without giving exact numbers, we want them -- our expectation is they're into the sort of millions rather than hundreds of thousands of revenue. And we'd like to see that step up significantly in the future.

Great. Thank you, Tom. And then we had a couple of questions about the significant growth forecast for 2027. And [indiscernible], given the improvement in financial performance in H2 '26 and [indiscernible]?

Okay. Well, I'll make a start on both of those if you want. I think in the conclusion of the results, I suppose -- I mean, published updated forecast this morning. Obviously, it's up to them what numbers they forecast. But we're comfortable saying we think we're on for significant growth this year. Although as Chris has said, that is -- that will be weighted more towards H2 in terms of revenues, just given we had a couple of delays in H1. And just picking up Martin's question around the outlook. I mean Cavendish, again, Cavendish has their numbers out there. I mean just H2 '26, the numbers I've got reported revenue of GBP 6.8 million, not including the grant funded income, and that was an adjusted EBITDA profit of GBP 0.2 million. So I mean, that's probably not a bad starting point, although just the caveat being, obviously, the cost base will evolve as the business grows. But I mean I can't really give a kind of revenue or profit forecast, but that's what we achieved in H2.

Yes. And the Cavendish forecast for '28 on a revenue of GBP 13.7 million is forecasting adjusted EBITDA GBP 0.2 million. So we're not far from that position. And what we've done, as I mentioned earlier in the presentation, is we have taken a view as we integrate our regulatory services that the revenue may take a dip in that particular area while we restructure things, but we'd expect that to come back. So yes, I think we're -- if we look at the Cavendish [indiscernible] GBP 13.7 million or thereabouts takes us to that profitable matches with what we said in half 2 '26.

I think so. And also just to note that we obviously are managing costs as carefully as we can to align with revenue. So that's profitability is still very much on our key part of our agenda.

And just a reminder for those [indiscernible] through the Cavendish website or research stream and anybody can register to receive those. Chris, do you want to wrap up with a closing comments?

Yes. Yes. Thanks, Alex, and thanks for the questions. We're very pleased with our progress. The financial year '26 was a good one for us, and we expect this to continue to grow as we go forward. We've got the full service offering now we're attracting some prestigious customers from pharmaceutical and large biotechs through to the smaller start-ups. And by integrating everything together, having the 3 pillars that we present to our customers, we think we're well positioned for increased growth both in the U.K. and the U.S. So yes, thanks again for taking time to listen to the presentation and yes, hopefully, we'll see some of you in York.

Fantastic. Thank you very much indeed for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which will help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.