hVIVO PLC (AIM:HVO), the clinical trials group, has bought a Berlin clinical research unit for an initial payment of just €250,000, with almost all of the price contingent on future revenue.
The company said on Thursday it had acquired the entire share capital of CRS Clinical Research Services Berlin, a specialist site running early-stage studies in dermatology and women's
Instead of a fixed price, hVIVO will pay 18% of the Berlin unit's annual revenue for each of the next three years, provided minimum revenue thresholds are met. Management expects that to total roughly €6 million in cash over the period.
An existing pension liability of about €2 million will be deducted from those payments, leaving expected net proceeds to the sellers of around €4 million.
The structure means the deal is effectively self-funding and leaves hVIVO's cash position intact, a notable feature for a company that has spent the past 18 months expanding by acquisition.
hVIVO bought CRS Mannheim and CRS Kiel in January 2025, and the Berlin site has operated alongside those units since, sharing recruitment, quality assurance and IT systems.
The company said the acquisition would be immediately earnings accretive and would add to both revenue and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) in the current financial year.
CRS Berlin generated unaudited EBITDA of €0.3 million on revenue of €10 million in 2025, a margin of about 3%. Net assets stood at €100,000 at the end of December.
Its contracted orderbook was approximately €10 million as at 30 June, covering most of this year's forecast revenue and extending into 2027.
The site has 32 beds, 18 of them for intensive monitoring, and has completed more than 350 studies.
hVIVO said it was a preferred research site for two of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies.
Yamin 'Mo' Khan, chief executive, said dermatology and women's health were large and strategically attractive areas of drug development that meaningfully broadened the group's addressable market.
He said the terms reflected a disciplined approach to capital allocation.
hVIVO built its reputation on human challenge trials, in which volunteers are deliberately infected with a virus to test vaccines and treatments, and has been diversifying away from that concentration.
The new therapeutic areas sit alongside existing work in infectious disease, respiratory, cardiometabolic and immunology.
Roughly half of CRS Berlin's proposals to sponsors are already submitted jointly with the Mannheim site.
