Aptamer (APTA) has undertaken a firm and conditional equity placing and subscription (‘the Placing’), raising £2.83m (gross) funding through placement of 1,415m new ordinary shares priced at 0.2p each. This follows the recent flurry of high margin Fee-For-Service (‘FFS’) contracts with Big Pharma and a major consumer goods company which have pushed the Group’s order book up to c.£1.8m, while its pipeline of further opportunities has risen to c.£2.1m.
Accompanying this improved momentum, the Group is now also proposing Boardroom changes that will be ratified at the forthcoming General Meeting (‘GM’). This will see its co-founder and current CTO reassume the role of CEO, with ambition to place increased focus back on asset development and licensing in anticipation of crystallising much higher-value inflection points for shareholders. Changing emphasis away from relatively predictable FFS operations will, of course, raise Aptamer’s risk profile, although Directors stress a good level of confidence in its ability to capture significantly greater, highly visible longer-term returns through accrual of downstream milestone payments, licensing fees and/or royalties as partnered projects approach and achieve commercialisation.