A trio of small-cap life sciences names used results and fundraises to mark inflection points on Tuesday, with Abingdon Health posting its first half of adjusted EBITDA profitability and Aptamer Group booking its maiden licensing revenues. Elsewhere, Solvonis Therapeutics formalised a European expansion route for its alcohol use disorder trial, Verici Dx closed an £8.75 million fundraise to fund commercial scaling, and EMV Capital's portfolio company Glycotest struck a liver biomarker licensing deal.
Abingdon Health turns EBITDA-positive as revenue climbs 30%
Abingdon Health (AIM:ABDX) reported revenue of £11 million for the year ended 30 June, up 30% from £8.4 million a year earlier, with total revenue including grant income rising 32% to £11.3 million. The rapid lateral-flow diagnostics developer, which also provides regulatory and contract development services, saw second-half revenue of £6.8 million mark a 62% jump on the first half's £4.2 million, even as shares fell 13.953% to 9.25p on the day.
Contract development revenue, the main driver of the acceleration, grew 56% to £5 million, while regulatory services and MedTech consulting revenue rose 21% to £4.1 million, helped by a full year of contribution from CS Lifesciences. Contract manufacturing held flat at £1.3 million and product sales edged up to £0.6 million. The adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to £1.5 million for the year from £2.6 million, with the group swinging to an adjusted EBITDA profit of £0.2 million in the second half versus a £1.7 million loss in the first half of FY25. Loss before tax improved to £2 million from £3.5 million, gross margin rose to 47.1% from 44.3%, and cash stood at £2.9 million at year end, up from £1.9 million, with £0.7 million still outstanding under its Innovate UK loan facility.
"Having reached adjusted EBITDA profitability in the second half of FY26, the Board's expectation is that continued revenue growth will take the Group to an improved EBITDA position for the year ending 30 June 2027 compared with FY26," said Tom Hayes, CFO.
Executive chairman Dr Chris Hand flagged a significant second-half weighting of revenue expected again in FY27, after delays since June tied to speciality reagent availability and specification changes, alongside a CS Lifesciences restructuring toward higher-margin work that will dent revenue more than EBITDA. The reported EBITDA inflection is the clearest evidence yet that Abingdon's pivot from pure diagnostics manufacturer to a broader contract development and regulatory services group is paying down its losses, even if the sharp share price fall suggests investors are weighing near-term revenue lumpiness against that longer-term trajectory.
Solvonis signs Portugal accord to expand AUD trial into EU
Solvonis Therapeutics (LSE:SVNS), the late clinical-stage CNS biopharmaceutical company, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with ICAD, Portugal's public addiction institute, and clinical partner Panegreen, with shares up 1.52% to 0.1066p. The agreement will assess adding Portuguese sites to MORE-KARE, the UK Phase 3 trial of SVN-001, which combines ketamine with structured psychological therapy for severe alcohol use disorder.
The accord converts into a signed framework the European expansion plan Solvonis first flagged on 25 August, when it raised £1.3 million gross via placing partly to fund assessment of EU trial sites. ICAD, part of Portugal's Ministry of Health, will help assess referral pathways and patient recruitment, while Panegreen, which runs the Clinic of Change ketamine-assisted psychotherapy clinic in Lisbon, will coordinate the Portuguese work, covering potential investigators, treatment capacity and costs. "Having Portugal's national addiction institute alongside us is a strong vote of confidence in our European plans for SVN-001," said Anthony Tennyson, chief executive of Solvonis Therapeutics.
Non-executive director Renata Crome said "the focus is practical: patients, treatment capacity, timelines and costs," framing the deal as a due-diligence step rather than a trial launch. For a company whose single pivotal asset is SVN-001, formalising a credible route into a second European jurisdiction widens the pool of eligible patients and gives the Phase 3 programme a hedge against any UK recruitment bottlenecks.
Verici Dx completes £8.75 million fundraise
Verici Dx (AIM:VRCI) has completed an £8.75 million fundraising, combining the institutional placing announced on 8 October with the Winterflood Retail Access Platform retail offer launched the following day, with shares flat at 0.225p. Both the placing and retail offer were priced at 0.2p per share, an 11.1% discount to the mid-market closing price on 30 September, the last trading day before suspension.
The £8.5 million institutional placing comprised 4.25 billion new shares, split between 1.68 billion firm placing shares issued under existing authorities and 2.57 billion conditional placing shares requiring new shareholder approval, while the WRAP retail offer added up to 125 million further shares. The raise follows a smaller £2.5 million placing in June at 0.35p per share, after which Verici Dx reported unaudited net cash of about $1.3 million at the end of March, down sharply from $3.3 million at the end of 2025.
Proceeds are earmarked for scaling commercial and supporting personnel. The scale of dilution involved, with billions of new shares issued at a steep discount to fund a company that had burned through most of its cash since the start of the year, underscores how stretched Verici's balance sheet had become before this raise and how much the company is now leaning on new capital to extend its commercial runway.
Aptamer Group lands first licensing revenue as sales pipeline swells
Aptamer Group (AIM:APTA) reported revenue of £1.5 million for the year ended 30 June, up 28% from £1.2 million the previous year, as the synthetic Optimer binder developer moved from proving its technology to commercialising it, with shares at 0.325p. The period included the company's first-ever licensing revenues, following agreements with Twist Bioscience and Alphazyme that carry upfront payments, royalties and supply revenue.
Gross profit rose to £0.82 million from £0.58 million, while the adjusted EBITDA loss widened slightly to £2.34 million from £2.19 million as administrative expenses increased to £3.2 million from £2.9 million. Aptamer ended the year with £4.4 million in cash, up from £1.1 million, after raising £2 million gross in July 2025 and a further £4.5 million gross in April 2026, giving the board runway into calendar 2028 before any further licensing receipts. "This has been a year of inflection for Aptamer, proving our technology to proving our business model with two royalty-bearing licences now signed, repeat orders from multiple top 20 pharmaceutical companies, and our first entry into the radioligand therapy market," said Dr Arron Tolley, chief executive.
Tolley added that the company enters the new financial year "with recurring fee-for-service demand, growing licensing income, and multiple development programmes advancing in our own pipeline." The shift from a single revenue line of contract services to a blended model of royalties, upfront licensing fees and repeat pharma orders gives Aptamer a more durable growth engine than its prior fee-for-service-only model, even as the widening EBITDA loss shows the commercial transition still carries a cost.
EMV Capital's Glycotest licenses liver biomarker IP
Glycotest, a portfolio company of Emv Capital (EMVC), has signed a licensing agreement covering its liver disease biomarker intellectual property, with EMV Capital shares down 3.093% to 47.0p on the day. The deal extends the commercial reach of Glycotest's diagnostic technology, which is designed to detect liver disease and liver cancer risk.
For EMV Capital, whose model rests on growing and monetising a portfolio of science-based ventures, a licensing agreement at one of its holdings offers early evidence of value creation within the book, even as the parent's own shares slipped on the day the news was disclosed.