Lion anticipates recovery after reducing Q1 losses.
improvement from a year ago, trimming losses in the first quarter.
53 per cent of the Lion's Q1 revenues, or €2.1 million were
generated from Bayer projects.
Figures for total revenue dropped by 27 per cent to €4 million compared to €5.5 million for this period last year. Net loss for this period were decreased by 43 per cent to €2.6 million.
Lion confirmed the backlog from Bayer projects was decreasing as the two existing agreements approached expiration. However, this quarter saw Lion launch its Sequence Reduction System (SRS) software, used to manage data produced in drug research.
The company said it had received four new SRS orders form Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., Pioneer Hi-Bred, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, and Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Lion did not expect recovery to occur quickly, predicting sales in the second and third quarter of the fiscal year 2004/2005 to be lower than in the first quarter. Recovery was expected to start in the North American markets first, followed by Asia Pacific and Europe.
At the end of the quarter, Lion had €39 million in cash and liquid assets, well above its market capitalisation of €25 million.
Lion commented that while life science customers continue to invest cautiously, an increased level of new professional services business backlog for bioinformatics customisation and implementation assistance would help to fuel recovery.
