Cambridge Cognition Holdings plc (LON:COG) Chief Executive Officer Matthew Stork caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss interim results, growth drivers, their strengthened leadership team, new therapeutic areas and what investor can expect in the next six months.
Q1: First off, Matthew, congratulations on Cambridge Cognition’s interim results to the 30th of June. Could you just talk us through the highlights of the first half?
A1: We’re really pleased with the results. We had strong financial growth, won major contracts in neuroinflammatory disorders, schizophrenia and PTSD with our gold standard cognitive assessments, CANTAB, and our digital solutions as well. We also started a major validation study with our voice-based solution, NeuroVocalix, really exciting results from those and as well, we’ve expanded our team and are investing for further growth.
Q2: Now, you mentioned growth in revenue of 31% for the company compared to the first half of last year. What’s driving that growth?
A2: Well, we had strong orders growth in 2021 for contracts due to start later in 2021 and in early 2022 so we’ve recognised revenues from those contracts at start and then on an ongoing basis of course.
The underlying drivers for those growths really are that we’ve been delivering on commercial execution, for example, we tripled the number of leads generated by our sales marketing team in the period and we’ve expanded our product range over the last few years and continue to do so with more cognitive assessments, electronic clinical outcomes assessments, that’s questionnaires and scales typically used in clinical trials, and developing and launching virtual clinical trial modules.
So, we’ve got an attractive, broader portfolio, and we can also upsell more customers.
Q3: You’ve also strengthened your senior leadership team with a number of appointments, could you just expand on it for us?
A3: We’ve got an excellent leadership team, most of us worked together for many years now. This year we’d promoted Dr. Francesca Cormack to be our Chief Scientist, she’s extremely knowledgeable, professional in the sector, really well known and joins from within the company so we know her very well, of course. We’ve also hired Stephen Symonds to be our CFO, Steven joins from a background with extensive financial experience and direct knowledge of drug development from his previous company so he’s a great hire into the team.
Q4: Now, you talk about PTSD as a new therapeutic area with potential growth, how are you going about developing opportunities in new therapeutic areas?
A4: We set out a goal a few years ago to expand new therapeutic areas with our existing portfolio and we had great success in schizophrenia and in neuro-oncology over the last couple of years and now, we’re really pleased to be working on PTSD studies as well.
There’s a real unmet need in the area and a number of new drugs, there’s only a couple of drugs available for PTSD but there are a number of new areas being worked on. Our scientists have been working with some leading early adopters in the field providing consultation on possible clinical trial design and protocols and we’ve been really fortunate in succeeding in winning contracts and collaborations in those fields.
The payoff is really likely to be over a number of years into the future as those trial results are released, and then we should be in position to expand usage in those therapeutic areas.
Q5: Just looking forward, what can investors expect from Cambridge Cognition in the next six months?
A5: We’re operating in growth markets and we’re continuing to invest in commercial execution and developing new IP and pursuing corporate business development opportunities. So, we’ve got a lot of work happening in the background and we expect to see more progress over the next six months, for sure.
Financially, we’ve got an excellent contracted order book, which is now up at £18.6 million, that’s a record for the company, as of the end of June, and a really healthy pipeline of opportunities.
So, we’ve got good coverage of the second half of 2022, and reasonable visibility of 2023 already. On top of that, we’re working on projects that could support faster growth into the future so it’s a really exciting place to be.
