HEIDELBERG, Germany--(BW HealthWire)--Feb. 6, 2002-- -- Successful management of total costs through focussing on key areas* LION's total knowledge management solutions strengthened through alliance with IBM and completed acquisition of NetGenics
LION bioscience AG (Neuer Markt: LIO, WKN: 504 350, Nasdaq: LEON) announced today stable growth of revenues for the third quarter of the current fiscal year and the nine months period ended December 31, 2001.
Third Quarter Results
Despite the slowdown of economic development in all industries following September 11, 2001, the company managed to increase sales to Euro 10.3 million in the third quarter of this fiscal year (Euro 10.2 million Q2 FY 2002). Compared to the same quarter of the previous financial year, license fees increased by 100% from Euro 2.9 million to Euro 5.9 million and research and development fees decreased by 6.5 per cent or Euro 0.3 million to Euro 4.4 million.
At the same time, LION reduced its operating loss by Euro 0.6 million to Euro 11,2 million in the third quarter of fiscal year 2002 compared to the previous quarter. Total costs and expenses decreased to Euro (21.5 million) in the third quarter (from Euro (22.0 million) in Q2 FY 2002). Earnings per share improved to Euro (0.52) in the third quarter compared to Euro (0.55) in the second quarter of fiscal year 2002.
Nine Month Results
LION increased its total sales in the first nine months of the current fiscal year by 90% up to Euro 29.5 million. This increase is due to positive developments both in LION's license fees as well as research and development fees. License fees rose by 104% to Euro 13.6 million for the first nine months in fiscal year 2002 (Euro 6.7 million in FY 2001). Research and development fees increased from Euro 8.8 million to Euro 15.9 million, i.e. by 80%, in the same time period.
The ratio of operating loss to revenue for the first nine months of fiscal year 2002 was as planned. Whereas revenues almost doubled, operating loss increased only by 55% from Euro (23.3 million) in the first nine months of fiscal year 2001 to Euro (36.1 million) in the first nine months of fiscal year 2002 (excluding the non-cash conversion charges incurred in connection with the transfer of preferred shares into common shares during the first nine months of fiscal year 2001, which totaled Euro 8.7 million).
Third Quarter Highlights
Strategic partnership with IBM: Through the strategic partnership announced in November 2001, LION is now in the postition to jointly offer enterprise-wide knowledge management solutions with IBM, consisting of scientific applications and integration solutions with professional information technology (IT) infrastructure and implementation services out of one hand.
Partnership with Paradigm Genetics and ACE BioSciences: The partnerships agreed in the third quarter of FY 2002 extend LION's expertise to the field of metabolic profiling (collaboration with Paradigm Genetics) and proteomics (collaboration with ACE BioSciences) and will support the development of new LION IT-products in these areas to support pharmaceutical research and discovery based on this information. In addition, ACE BioSciences has licensed all of LION software solutions for its research activities.
Launch of Web-Based Training Bioinformatics (WBT): WBT meets the requirements of the growing market for e-learning solutions in bioinformatics. Bayer is the first customer using the LION WBT Bioinformatics for its internal education and training.
Launch of LION Hosted Solution (LHS): LHS is LION's hosted bioinformatics environment, providing advanced bioinformatics functionality to the biotech industry. UCB Research, Inc., a subsidiary of UCB S.A., located in Cambridge, MA was the first customer to subscribe to LHS.
Business development
The current development of the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2002 is in line with LION's expectations regarding cost and bottom line. We expect this to continue in Q4 FY 2002. With the completion of the acquisition of NetGenics and in conjunction with LION's proven expertise in enterprise wide knowledge management solutions, LION is uniquely positioned to provide the life science industry with total knowledge management solutions. A good example is today's announcement of the expansion of LION's existing collaboration with Nestle, first started in November 2000, that focuses on the implementation of a research knowledge management system at Nestle. Nestle - besides Bayer - is the second large life science organization that has decided to partner with LION to build integrated information and knowledge management environments to fulfill the demands resulting from the large amount of diverse data and data formats in research.
Please download the comprehensive report for the first nine months from our web site at lionbioscience.com |
