Oxford Nanopore Technologies PLC said on Tuesday that first half performance was in line with expectations despite a ‘challenging backdrop’, as its annual loss widened slightly.

The Oxford-based specialist in DNA and RNA sequencing technologies said its pretax loss for the six months ended June 30 widened to £74.7 million from £70.1 million.

Its revenue fell slightly to £84.1 million, a 2.2% decrease year on year from £86.0 million. Underlying revenue was up by 9.2% to 82.6 million from 75.6 million, and was up 12% at constant currency.

Gross profit for the first half was £49.5 million, with the 2024 full-year gross margin expected to be 57%.

Oxford Nonopore won various contracts over the last six months such as with Precision Health Research Singapore, or Precise, to sequence 10,000 long read human genomes to gain a deeper understanding of Asian genetic diversity. The company also agreed a multi-million, multi-year contract expansion in August with Plasmidsaurus, delivering whole plasmid sequencing.

Chief Executive Officer Gordon Sanghera said: ‘As we look forward, our highly differentiated platform and substantial market opportunity position us well to deliver long-term, sustainable growth. Our growth and margin guidance for the full year remains unchanged. We enter the second half in a strong position; new and enlarged contract wins, such as Precise and Plasmidsaurus, coupled with the increased productivity of our sales teams in the second quarter reinforces our confidence in delivering between 20 - 30% underlying revenue growth on a constant currency basis in full year 2024.’

Peel Hunt said 2024 financial year-end consensus expectations for Oxford Nanopore are for £185.0 in revenue, £105.3 million in gross profit and a loss of £110.6 million in adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation.

Shares in Oxford Nanopore Technologies were up 6.2% to 129.09 pence each in London on Tuesday morning.

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