Soaring process development revenues prompt Avid to raise full-year guidance
At $7.1m, second quarter process development revenues were up 37% over the first three months of Avid’s fiscal year, and topped the CDMO’s prior quarterly revenue record by 23%. Avid CEO Nick Green discussed the results on the company’s quarterly results conference call with investors.
“We had particularly strong revenues from process development services,” said Green. “This is particularly encouraging as PD is where the majority of new customers and new projects are on-boarded. And it bodes well for the future growth of the business as a whole and validates our decision to invest in further expansions of both capacity and capabilities in this key element of our business.”
The growth in process development sales, which rose 74% year on year, helped Avid to increase its revenues to $34.8m in the second quarter. Total sales were up 33% on revenue for the prior year period.
Avid is laying the groundwork for further growth of the process development business. In recent months, the company has launched cell and gene therapy analytical and process development capabilities and begun adding mammalian cell process development capacity.
The mammalian cell process development expansion, which is forecast to cost around $6m, will give Avid additional space to onboard future customers. Avid is on track to complete all its current mammalian cell expansions in the next few months. Once complete, Avid estimates the mammalian cell expansion could add up to $20m in annual process development revenues.
Growing process development sales could also benefit other parts of the business, as the CEO outlined in an overview of Avid’s workflow.
“When somebody takes transfers of projects into the business, typically we’ll do some small scale runs in PD. We may do some work on that process, or, if the process is already well developed, we’re just basically demonstrating what they have already told us, ready for moving it across into the manufacturing facility. It’s really the front end of the business where things are coming in,” said Green.
