IXICO PLC (LSE:IXI, OTC:PHYOF, FRA:PYPB) CEO, Bram Goorden, talked with Proactive about the company’s interim results, highlighting strong revenue growth, expanding demand in Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials and the company’s evolving TechBio strategy.
Goorden said IXICO delivered “23% growth of revenues” alongside “38% growth of order book versus the same half last year,” adding that the company now has visibility over “95%” of expected revenues for financial year 2026. He explained that the growth has been driven by IXICO’s “innovate, lead, scale strategy,” which has resulted in new contract wins, extensions to existing studies and growing momentum in later-stage Alzheimer’s disease programmes.
The CEO noted that IXICO continues to strengthen its position in neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, while also expanding into new revenue streams through partnerships in the diagnostics sector. He highlighted the company’s work supporting blood-based biomarkers in Alzheimer’s research as an exciting development area.
Goorden also discussed IXICO’s recent £10 million capital raise and how it will support the company’s TechBio strategy. He said the investment will help “productize” the company’s IXI technology platform while maintaining momentum in the imaging CRO business. The company recently released version 10 of its IXI platform, improving upload capacity, speed and data processing capabilities to support greater automation and scalability.
Proactive: Bram, a good set of results, what’s driving the growth, and is it likely to continue for the rest of the financial year?
Bram Goorden: I would say very proud of that. 23% growth of revenues, 38% growth of order book versus the same half last year. And that's an important one, as you know, because the order book really gives that visibility on the future revenues as well, where at the moment we now, in the immediate future, know that we are covering 95% of our revenues for 26.
The drivers are the ones that I have been talking about here before. They are the results of what I think is now a tangible result of the innovate, lead, scale strategy, which at the one hand, of course produces more deals. We've had more wins and deal flow, both new ones, but also existing contracts where we have made a bigger impact and where we've seen extensions of contracts.
And then, importantly, in these disease areas that we set out to go and make an impact, Alzheimer's disease first and foremost. So we've had some important wins there. And that also in later stages of the clinical development cycle. So phase three we had an important phase three win at the beginning of our first half. And then also some phase two extensions.
And then lastly, as a driver, new revenue streams, new revenue areas. We of course, conditionally serve the biopharma industry. But more recently, you've also seen us make some deals with the diagnostics industry, where we've especially helped some of these blood-based biomarkers in the Alzheimer's space. So very exciting. And I think a continuation, really, of what you've seen me talk about here before.
Proactive: It seems scale is really building across IXICO in terms of geographies, pipeline and therapeutic areas. Please can you comment on that?
Bram Goorden: Yes, I mentioned the disease areas, the therapeutic areas already. So obviously, an expansion into Alzheimer's, you can expect more Parkinson's and will continue down that route because that's really the strategy which we set out for.
But then also, when I did this capital raise, well, talk about the most recent one, but we also did one not so long ago when I joined the company with that initial smaller capital raise, we really helped increase our footprint, especially stateside.
So in the US and now more recently, we actually see that we need to turn our attention more towards the eastern hemisphere as well, looking at how we can better serve the Asian region. We do that at the one hand by bringing or increasing the footprints of putting people where they are needed, because obviously we're still a service company first and foremost, but also, of course, by the use of our technology, because these days, of course, through the help of AI and with the agility that we have with our group here, we can very much cover that global scale now.
Proactive: It looks like you are starting to execute the TechBio strategy. How will you balance the existing underlying imaging CRO business with your plans to enable external parties to access your technology platform?
Bram Goorden: Yeah, that's an exciting one. I already mentioned the capital raise, so I should really turn to this most recent capital raise, which was a £10 million capital raise. That's a considerable one, I would say, for the size of the company that we are as well.
And with this one, we're really going to what we call our TechBio strategy. And I'm sure I'll talk more about that towards the end of our financial year and as I hopefully get back to this stage here. But this TechBio strategy is going to help productize our platform. So it is going to be a different type of work. It's also going to be a different type of revenue.
But to your question, we will not do that by disrupting any of the good momentum that we have within the current imaging CRO business that we have. And so it's going to be an organic evolution. It's not going to be a revolution.
We're going to make use of our existing talent. Obviously, we'll add talent as well. And then it's going to be working with these partners. As you mentioned, we had a deal with Medidata very recently. Medidata is a key data-capturing company serving 80% of the biopharma industry.
And so together with these partners, we're now going to develop the platform further. We're going to ringfence some of the money that obviously we've raised, because we've raised it with a very specific strategy in mind, but not without keeping our focus on the CRO business. I think that's going to be very important.
Proactive: I saw an announcement last week relating to the latest release of the IXI technology platform. How has the platform changed and improved and why is that important?
Bram Goorden: Yeah. So when you talk about the TechBio strategy, obviously, it's the underlying technology that we have in our company that is very important. We call our platform IXI; we consider it a bit of a hidden gem that has always stood behind the services which we deliver.
And so that announcement that you saw was also us going a little bit more public and going outside with some of these achievements that we have. So this was version ten of our IXI platform, where you especially see some improvements in terms of upload capacity, speed, and just sort of the sheer amount of data that we can now ingest for our analytics.
And those are our building blocks towards more automation and standardisation. And that's what you will hear me talk about more also when we speak about the TechBio strategy.
Proactive: What does the future hold, and will you continue this growth trajectory?
Bram Goorden: Well, I think that's what everyone expects at least. And that's why I joined the company as well. So I mean, when I joined 18 months ago, I couldn't have hoped that today we are where we are.
So I think from a CRO perspective, we are hopefully proving now that it is totally possible in the CNS, so the neurodegenerative space, to have a company of our size with double-digit growth over achieving, and we're going to continue to do that, but then also utilizing that technology to truly scale.
So I think to answer your question, the future is definitely going to be about scaling technology and going to more recurring revenues. That's also what we've been saying during the capital raise. But then in the immediate future, as I mentioned, we've got an order book that covers 95% of revenues for the financial year '26. And so we'll definitely focus on first delivering or over-delivering those.
Proactive: Congratulations on these latest numbers. Thank you very much for your time today.