By Josh White
Date: Wednesday 18 May 2022
LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - EKF Diagnostics said in an update on Wednesday that it has already made "good progress" with its investment plans to support growth in the new financial year.
The AIM-traded firm, which was holding its annual general meeting, said it had made "significant" investment to expand its fermentation capabilities at the South Bend, Indiana life sciences facility.
Non-executive chairman Christopher Mills told shareholders the company had a demand-driven pipeline of opportunities that was expected to start flowing once the investment in new fermenters was completed by the end of the current year, with the company on track to have the capacity to support "significant" revenue growth through to 2024.
"We are also making good progress in redeploying our contract manufacturing and laboratory services capacity and skill set into non-Covid related areas," Mills said.
"In contract manufacturing we are actively working with new partners to build a strong pipeline for non-Covid products.
"This includes delivering validation batches for products which are expected to be launched throughout 2022 and into 2023."
Christopher Mills said that in laboratory services, the ADL Health team was expanding its range of testing capabilities across a "broader suite" of healthcare applications, and was progressing well.
"Trading in the first quarter has been strong and we have delivered first quarter revenues in line with that of the corresponding period in 2021, and we remain on track to deliver full-year results in line with current market forecasts.
"In our established point-of-care and central laboratory businesses we continue to see market growth following the Covid slowdown and in the first quarter have seen sales growth compared with 2021.
"As a board we remain confident in delivering on our growth strategy to 2024 and I would like to thank my fellow shareholders for their support."
At 1432 BST, shares in EKF Diagnostics Holdings were down 0.29% at 34.5p.
Reporting by Josh White at Sharecast.com.