Penarth- based point-of-care firm EKF Diagnostics have further upgraded its current year trading prospects after a strong first six months.
EKF, which is listed on the Alternative Investment Market and has a global client base, said that revenues in the first half were up 46.5% to £38.56m with net profit after tax up 122% to £9.19m.
Highlights included a new multi-million dollar global supply contract for phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), a buffer solution used in biological research, with a global private sector partner. It also opened new PrimeStore MTM (Covid-19 collection kits) and PBS manufacturing facilities in Cardiff (additional to its Penarth HQ and manufacturing operation) and in Boerne in Texas to meet wider customer demand in the UK and USA.
Non-executive chairman of EKF, Christopher Mills, said: “The board is very confident that trading for the year ending 31 December 2021 will be comfortably ahead of already upgraded management expectations.
“The group remains confident that its growth strategy, as outlined to shareholders at the annual general meeting
in May, and set out above, will create a business which, aside from any Covid-19 related revenues, is capable of
generating significant double-digit growth in adjusted Ebitda over the next three to four years.”
In a note broker Singer said: “EKF has delivered another strong set of results, with the step change in the scale of the business firmly consolidated. H1 revenues increased 46.5% driven by an ongoing recovery in the core business and strong demand from a number of public and private sector customers for sample collection devices.
"The outlook remains positive and progress is being made against the new strategy set out earlier in the year. We upgrade our full year revenue forecasts by 7% and Ebitda by 13% noting this still implies an H1 weighting to results, which may again prove to be overly conservative. With growth opportunities on a number of fronts, we continue to see a strong investment case for EKF.”
