Cambridge Cognition Holdings plc (LON:COG) Chief Executive Officer Matthew Stork caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss interim results, sales order of 74%, Monument Therapeutics, launch of Neurovocalix and what investors can expect over the next 6-12 months.
Cambridge Cognition Holdings is a world leading neuroscience technology company committed to enhancing global reserahc, accelerating treatment development and improving patient outcomes in conditions affecting brain health by optimising the assessment of cognition. This week, the company has announced its interim results for the six months ended 30th June 2021 and joining me today to discuss the update is CEO Matthew Stork.
Q1: First off, congratulations on a strong set of interim results, could you just talk us through the highlights?
A1: We’re really pleased with our financial results in the first six months of this year with really good commercial performance and execution of our strategy.
We’ve achieved a record level of orders in the half and, as a result, we’ve seen a growth in revenues of 50% to £4.5 million and we’ve also returned a profit.
Commercially, we’ve had a lot of success. We’ve won a long term evergreen licencing agreement, contracting new therapy areas including a long COVID and a brain cancer study, two studies there. Also, an order for our largest ever funded study which is a mixture of at-home longer tests plus short daily tests, two to three times a day as well.
We’ve also continued to execute our strategy, for example expanding our portfolio, that’s been one of our strategies with the provision into our production solution of Neurovocalix that can conduct common verbal cognitive tests. We’ve also spun-out Monument Therapeutics so it’s been a really successful first half.
Q2: You mentioned an increase in sales order of 74% to £8.6 million, what’s that down to?
A2: It’s down to several factors. We’ve been really focussing on commercial delivery and also investing in sales resource over the last couple of years to increase coverage and at the same time, there have been underlying market factors causing market growth with upswing in clinical trials for central nervous systems’ disorders of around 20%. During the pandemic, a shift, and more investment in virtual clinical trials, or at least in part, so maybe hybrid clinical trials as well.
Our solution is ideal for those, we’ve demonstrated that the tests that we provide work very similarly at home as they do in the clinic and so we’ve been taking orders for those. We’ve also been taking a couple of very large less usual order such as the big study mentioned earlier.
Q3: The company completed the successful spin-out and venture financing of Monument Therapeutics, how will that affect the company?
A3: Monument is a really exciting drug development company and we’ve been incubating it for a couple of years now. We started off mainly grant funded and the development plans has moved into needing more funding to start clinical trials in its own right.
After the venture capital investment, we continued to be a major shareholder, owning around a third of the company at the moment and we have a licence agreement in place that will pay royalties on successful commercialisation by Monument.
So, it provides us with another potential revenue stream in the future as well.
Q4: You also mentioned the launch of Neurovocalix which is now ready for clinical trials, what does that mean for the business?
A4: We’re really excited about the potential for Neurovocalix, it can automate common verbal cognitive tests to be used by many neuroscientists, phycologists, neurologists in clinical trials.
In Q1, we completed development of a regulatory compliance system that can be used by our pharmaceutical clients in clinical trials. Now we’re working with leading universities to validate the system, show that it works with patients to demonstrate that it’s collecting the right data.
We’re marketing the solution now, we’ve got several clients interested in placing orders, of course they want the validation data so we expect to land those once the validation is done.
Q5: Just looking forward, what can investors expect from Cambridge Cognition in the next 6-12 months?
A5: We’re progressing well through the second half of the year already, of course, and we’re tracking well towards the year-end and we really continue to focus on our commercial execution, broadening our portfolio, investing in developing new solutions and building partnerships.
I’m really looking forward to a successful full year for 2021.
