16 April 2020 – licensing agreement and trading update
The global pharmaceutical and services company has signed an exclusive licensing and distribution agreement with Porton Biopharma Limited to commercialise Erwinase. Erwinase is approved for patients with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia who have developed hypersensitivity to E. coli-derived asparaginase in 19 countries, including the US, Europe and Japan. Clinigen will look to expand the market opportunity for Erwinase by driving awareness of the product’s availability, ensuring uninterrupted patient access, launching in select new countries and increasing the global supply of the product into unlicensed markets utilising its global infrastructure through a global access program. Erwinase will be the Group’s third biologic and fits well within Clinigen’s existing haematology and oncology product portfolio and customer base. In the year to 31 December 2019, net sales of Erwinase were US$177m. Although the agreement will start on 1 January 2021, it is anticipated that net sales for Clinigen will begin in the second half of 2021. Trading for the year to 30 June 2020 continues to be in line with expectations and the business had a strong first nine months of the year with organic gross profit growth of over 10% to the end of March 2020. To date disruption from Covid-19 has been marginal. With this in mind we keep our BUY rating.