Diaceutics to become fourth Northern Irish company listed on London Stock Exchange

Diaceutics plc, a revenue-generating, and profitable diagnostics data analytics and implementation services company which services the global pharmaceutical industry, today announces that it is seeking a listing on the AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange. This will make Diaceutics the fourth Northern Irish company currently listed on the London Stock Exchange. The company is expected to have a market capitalisation on admission of approximately £53M.

Diaceutics has conditionally raised £17M by way of a Placing of 22,368,427 Ordinary Shares of 76p each through its nominated adviser and broker, Cenkos Securities plc. It is expected that Admission will become effective at 8am on or around 21^st March 2019 and shares will trade under the AIM symbol ‘DXRX’.

Diaceutics was founded in 2005 by Belfast man and 2018 EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalist, Peter Keeling, and operates in the global diagnostics commercialisation market. With offices in Belfast, UK; Dundalk, Ireland; Parsippany, New Jersey; and Singapore, the organisation’s services result in more effective pairing of patients with specific treatments, which in turn leads to better patient healthcare outcomes. In 2018, the Group had an average of 65 full-time employees in 17 countries. The Group has achieved compound annual revenue growth in sales of over 50% in the past two years.

Last year, 42% of all FDA drug approvals were for precision medicine therapies, representing 25 approvals in total. Precision medicine drugs are tailored to patients expressing specific molecular or genetic biomarkers, which are identified with a diagnostic test. Ineffective testing, accompanied by persistent challenges throughout the current diagnostic testing market, can therefore significantly reduce access to new, more effective drugs.

To address this, Diaceutics has amassed a set of data from more than 2,500 laboratories including 3.5M longitudinal patient records, insurance claims data for 50M patients and 58M testing event data points from 35 countries. As part of this data collection, it has accumulated a global proprietary database of individual laboratories’ capabilities across the industry.

Using its expertise and its data set, the Group is able to assist pharmaceutical clients improve the development, and delivery, of diagnostic testing. This is manifested through faster testing, better turnaround times, quicker positive identification and higher number of patients treated.

Ryan Keeling, CIO, Diaceutics, said: “This announcement will assist Diaceutics in its goal to develop a world class precision medicine data capability. We look forward to leveraging that data with our pharmaceutical clients to optimise patient access to diagnostic testing and are excited about the prospects of bringing on new data sets in new international markets.”

Diaceutics estimates that the addressable market for its specific services today is approximately US$0.5 billion. With expected market growth in the number of test dependent therapies, alongside increased investment by pharma to remove testing hurdles to seamless treatment, Diaceutics forecasts that the overall market will increase to US$2.5 billion by 2023. It currently provides services to 20 of the 30 largest global pharmaceutical companies. 

Peter Keeling, CEO, Diaceutics, said: “Diaceutics was founded out of a desire to get more patients access to improved healthcare. We are giving patients a higher likelihood of getting better by supporting access to the right test to determine the right treatment at the right time. This announcement today will help us in our mission to continue this great work.”

The Placing & use of funds

The net proceeds from the Placing, receivable by the Company, is expected to be approximately £15.2 million and will be used for the following: 

• £5.5 million for the acquisition of additional data sets to enhance its current coverage as well as adding new disease data, and implementing a partnership to develop AI analysis;
• £3 million to develop NEXUS, the Group’s proposed SaaS platform; and
• £2.5 million to develop international markets either organically or through acquisition, and for working capital;
• £3 million to pay down the existing debt facilities and an outstanding Director loan; and
• £1.2 million to strengthen the Company’s balance sheet which is expected to support future proposals submitted to pharma clients.

Philip White, CFO, Diaceutics, commented: “We would like to thank our existing shareholders and our new institutional investors for providing us with the support to take the business to the next stage of its development through our admission to AIM. We are looking forward to the exciting times ahead and the additional funding as a result of the placings will help us with our growth strategy. We will continue to update shareholders as we progress.”