Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies Holdings plc
Pre-Close Trading Update;
US OTC QB Market Application
&
Notice of 2021 Final Results
Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies Holdings plc (“OCTP” or the “Company”), the holding company of Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies Ltd (“OCT”)(together, the “Group”), a pharmaceutical company developing prescription cannabinoid medicines for approval by key medicines regulatory agencies worldwide and targeting the U$ multi-billion pain market, is pleased to provide a Pre-Close Trading Update ahead of the publication of its Final Results for the year ended 31 May 2021 which are scheduled to be released on Monday 27 September 2021. Details of a presentation to investors via the InvestorMeet Platform will be announced shortly.
The Board expects to report results in line with budget. Notwithstanding the limited impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Group’s activities, very good progress has been made on advancements across all four current drug development programmes and OCTP remains firmly on target to achieve its timeline to commercialisation as set out in its IPO Prospectus published in May of this year.
At the year-end, the Group had cash reserves of approximately £14.6 million and a Government bounce-back loan of £50,000 which will be repaid early. Since admission to trading, the net proceeds from the accompanying share placing have been utilised in line with the Group’s strategy, as set out in the IPO Prospectus and remain on budget with regard to cash burn.
Changes to the composition of the Board as the Company transitioned to being a listed company, including the appointment of two independent Non-executive Directors, increased central costs during the year. Strict cash management controls are in operation across all areas of expenditure, whereby all budgeted central costs have been reviewed with measures agreed to reduce these wherever possible, in order to maximise the Group’s financial resources available for its drug development programmes.
The Group has made a positive start to the current financial year, where, during the first two months, approximately £1.15 million of R&D costs have been incurred across the four development programmes, primarily on the Group’s lead drug candidate OCT461201, which accounted for £0.52 million of the total.
Since the year-end, the £2.6 million agreement being delivered by international contract research organisation (“CRO”) Evotec, for an integrated drug development solution for accelerating early drug candidates into clinic, will facilitate the completion of the characterisation of OCT461201 by leveraging the well-proven, multi-modality, and technologically innovative platform and confirm its developability in terms of API (active pharmaceutical ingredient), manufacturing, clinical formulation and safety and toxicological profile. At the end of the programme, Evotec will provide the Company with a submission-ready regulatory document which will be used for submissions to regulatory agencies, as well as drug-batch approved and ready for First Time in Human clinical trials. The planning phase has been completed and “wet-work” initiated as per proposed timelines.
In parallel, OCTP has signed multi-site, multi-disciplinary in vitro and in vivo work-packages with CRO Eurofins to enable OCT461201 indication expansion into neuropathic disorders. After confirmation of 6-months stability of tech-transfer batch, the work has been initiated, with preliminary data packages available by the second half of September, well within the proposed timelines.
In addition, in order to fast-track the interaction with the regulatory agencies, OCTP has signed agreements and work-packages with regulatory consultancy firm Voisin Consulting SARL (trading as Voisin Consulting Life Technologies), a consulting team with more than 200 professionals in the UK, Europe, US and India, with expertise in medical devices, cannabinoids, neurological disorders and addiction, in order to provide important input in OCTP’s path-to-clinic strategy across the different target markets for both programme 1 (OCT4612021) and programme 2 (inhaled pCBs drug-device combination).
Application to be admitted to the US OTC QB Market
The Company is also pleased to announce that it has applied for its shares to be admitted to the OTC QB Market (the mid-tier OTC Equity Market in the United States) under the ticker symbol “OCTHF”. Trading on the OTC QB is an important strategic step for the Company. In addition to its London Stock Exchange Main Market Listing, this will give the business greater exposure to a much wider audience of potential investors by easing cross-border trading for the Company’s US investors. Further information can be found at www.otcmarkets.com/learn/market-101. There is no capital raise being conducted in conjunction with the application to trading on the OCT QB. The Company’s shares will continue to be traded on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “OCTP”. The Board expects that trading on the OTC QB will commence in approximately eight weeks. A further announcement will be made following confirmation.
This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of EU Regulation 596/2014 (which forms part of domestic UK law pursuant to the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018).
The Directors of the Company accept responsibility for the content of this announcement.
