Peregrine up on CMO Q1 sales and backlog, as new plant set to go online
For the first quarter FY2016, Peregrine Pharmaceuticals reported record revenue from its contact manufacturing business Avid Bioservices of $9.4m (€8.4m), up 71% year-on-year.
But revenues are likely to grow substantially, the firm said, as there is a $42m committed backlog from existing customers which will be carried-out in part once a new mammalian cell culture manufacturing facility in Tustin, California comes on line.
“The new manufacturing suite is fully built and the first internal pilot run is currently underway to verify all systems and equipment are properly functioning,” Peregrine CFO Paul Lytle said during an investor call yesterday.
“Our strategic investment in the Avid Bioservices business is already starting to pay dividends. Our clients are reserving manufacturing slots in the new facility which has increased our revenue backlog to approximately $42 million.”
A large proportion of the firm’s revenues come from its major client Halozyme Therapeutics, servicing monoclonal antibody development projects with Roche and Baxter. While the company hopes the new facility will attract new customers, it is the current customer base showing the most interest.
“In the new facility, a lot of the interest comes from the existing client base, even as much as we've had new potential customers coming through,” said CEO Steven King. “It's exciting, it's a real nice showpiece and it's really showing in the interest that it's generated from again the existing client base.”
The site, first announced last year, more than doubles Avid’s manufacturing capacity, though some of the space has been reserved to service its parent company’s lead product bavituximab, a chimeric mAb in Phase III trials for non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer.
