Horizon Discovery Group (HZD) announced their full year results this morning. Horizon is a biotechnology company focused on cell engineering and CRISPR screening. Revenue was up by 68% to £58.7 million helped by an acquisition. But the “reported loss” increased to £35.8 million due to the exceptional write-off of past investment in “In Vivo”. Although this is a non-cash impairment it suggests that there was past over-optimism in the viability of that business unit and excessive capitalisation of development expenditure. This follows from a strategic review of the company last year by new CEO Terry Pizzie.
They also have a new CFO. There has been a review of revenue recognition policies that has led them to restate 2017 revenue down from £36.5 million to £35.0 million. This is what the company has to say about that: “In 2019, the Group became aware of potential revenue recognition matters in connection with certain license revenue contracts. As a result, the Group undertook a detailed review of all such contracts and determined that the terms and conditions in some of those contracts had been misinterpreted and as a consequence, the accounting periods in which the revenue is recognised have been reassessed, due to license revenues being recognised before they were committed”. Who were their auditors you may ask? Answer: Deloitte. This looks like yet another case of a basic accounting failure that the auditors failed to pick up.
At the last AGM of the company, which I attended as a small shareholder, I questioned why the company was losing money on services. Surely if services were unprofitable, they don’t need to be provided to customers? Good to see that in the latest announcement they are withdrawing from “investment” in parts of the services portfolio. Another interesting comment in the announcement is this: “Our ‘Investing for Growth’ strategy will see the business shift from a scientifically-led life sciences company to a fully commercial tools company, which will mean that Horizon is increasingly well placed to capitalise on its market-leading position to drive sustained top-line growth”.
Apart from the above issues, the company does seem to be moving in the right direction and the comments about future prospects from the CEO are positive. The share price was unmoved at the time of writing.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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