Horizon Discovery Group plc Unaudited Preliminary Results For The Year Ended 31 December 2014

Cambridge, UK, 14^th April 2015: Horizon Discovery Group plc (LSE:HZD) (Horizon), the international life science company providing research tools and services that power genomics research and the development of personalised medicines, is pleased to announce its unaudited preliminary results for the year ended 31^st December 2014. 

Financial highlights

• Reported revenue increased by 79% to £11.9m (2013: £6.6m) with revenues from products and services growing
  by 99%
• Gross margin improvement to 55%, up from 52% at the end of 2013
• Research milestone portfolio increased 32% to approximately £158m (2013: £120m) plus royalties
• Operating loss of £5.3m (2013: £2.9m), before exceptional items of £0.8m, as Horizon invests for scale in line with our stated strategy
• Closing cash and cash equivalents of £18.5m (2013: £4.2m)

Corporate highlights

• Raised £68.6m net of expenses including £37.8m of new money for the Company in an IPO on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange
• Acquisition of CombinatoRx service business and assets from Zalicus Inc. for £4.7m
• Acquisition of Sage Labs Inc. for up to $48m (£29m) comprising up to $16m in cash and up to $32m in new ordinary shares
• Post year-end acquisition of Haplogen Genomics GmbH for an initial consideration of £6m, comprising £3m in cash and £3m in new ordinary shares
• Board strengthened with the appointment of Dr. Susan Galbraith, Susan Searle and Dr. David Smoller
• Strategic licensing of two key pieces of CRISPR gene editing intellectual property from ERS Genomics and the Broad Institute and additional rAAV gene editing intellectual property from Stanford University

Operational highlights

• Number of products grew by 186% to 2,750 (2013: 962) and further enhanced to circa 16,500 since year-end following acquisition of Haplogen Genomics
• Headcount increased to 183 (2013: 74)
• Number of customers increased by 171% to 955 (2013: 353) including 30 of the top 50 pharmaceutical companies
• Horizon Discovery Group offices now open in Boston (USA), St Louis (USA), Boyertown (USA) and Vienna (Austria)

Dr. Darrin Disley, CEO and President, Horizon Discovery Group plc, commented: “Horizon has had another strong year of growth underpinning its position as a leader in the field of genome editing and personalized medicine. Since our listing in March 2014, we have successfully delivered upon our international growth strategy, positioning the Company to offer a full spectrum of products and services that impact academic research, drug discovery and development, biomanufacturing and clinical diagnostics from DNA sequence to patient treatment. A combination of strong organic growth and the key complementary acquisitions of CombinatoRx, SAGE^® Labs and Haplogen Genomics mean that Horizon is well positioned to deliver further strong revenue growth in the coming year.

“Looking to 2015, we plan further investments in the scaling of our products and services businesses including the development and implementation of new e-Commerce and ERP systems group-wide that will deliver long term value as we continue on our strong growth trajectory.  We will also continue to leverage additional non-organic (milestone) value in our research business over the coming years.

“We remain committed to continuing to deliver our strategy of supplying innovative products, services and research that impact the development of personalised medicines and are excited about our prospects for the future as we continue our strategy to build a world class business.”