Smallpox fear fuels Acambis revival
VACCINE manufacturer Acambis expects to leap into the black this year as a result of its contracts to supply the US government with smallpox vaccines for every American citizen.
The company, whose shares have tripled in value since September's anthrax attacks in the US spread fears of bio-terrorism, said it expected to receive 75%-80% of the revenues from the main £313m contract this year.
'It is anticipated that the impact of these smallpox contracts will result in profitability for the group in 2002,' Acambis said, while posting a net loss of £12.4m for 2001, in line with expectations.
The contract, won in November against competition from GlaxoSmithKline and Merck & Co, has transformed Acambis, putting it in the rare position of a European biotech firm on the brink of profitability and catapulting it into the FTSE 250 index of mid-cap UK shares as of next Monday.
Acambis' trump card was that it had already won a $343m contract in September 2000 to supply smallpox vaccines to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention. In total, it will now supply the country with 209m doses of smallpox vaccine this year.
Acambis said revenues from the first US smallpox contract boosted turnover to £8.9m in 2001 from £6.3m in 2000, and swelled its cash reserves to £22.2m on December 31 from £21.2m the year before. But higher research and development spending on the smallpox vaccine, along with the cost of revamping its US manufacturing plant, prevented this from reaching its bottom line.
Acambis, formerly called Peptide Therapeutics and founded in 1992 by scientists from Birmingham University, intends to use the windfall from the US smallpox contracts to finance its research into pipeline of anti-viral and anti-bacterial vaccines, which are mostly for tropical diseases and aimed at tourists, the military and local populations.
The company has eight vaccines in clinical trials and expects another two to join them this year. It expects to submit its most advanced product Arilvax, a vaccine for yellow fever, for final approval by the US Food and Drug Administration in the second half of this year.
