CiToxLAB Group Announces a 34 Per Cent Revenue Increase for the First Half of 2012
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CiToxLAB Group has announced that the group’s consolidated first half 2012 revenues reached EUR 37.2M (USD 48.4 million approximately). This marks a 34 per cent increase compared with the same period in 2011.
CiToxLAB-North America, headquartered in Montreal, achieved revenues of CAD 17.8 million (EUR 13.6M). These are the highest since LAB-Research was founded and have resulted in a recruitment program of more than 100 new hires in the last 14 months.
In Europe, total revenues reached EUR 23.5 million (USD 30.5M approx). Revenues increased eighteen per cent and eight per cent at CiToxLAB-France and CiToxLAB-Hungary respectively while CiToxLAB-Scantox in Denmark remained stable.
All four CiToxLAB sites had positive EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) in H1 2012. CiToxLAB now employs more than 850 people.
The company explained that the good results, despite the morose general economic climate, were at least in part accounted for by the trend to outsourcing by the pharmaceutical industry.
The latter is particularly true of the non-clinical research and in the developing fields of translational and predictive toxicology, where CiToxLAB has an attractive offer in terms of quality, speed and cost-effectiveness, the company said.
Reviewing the merger and its results, Dr Jean-François Le Bigot, chairman and CEO said: “Our merger has boosted market access with our presence in Europe (France, Denmark, Hungary) as well as in North America, through our Montreal facility. This international presence gives us a significant advantage in dealing with pharmaceutical companies and also brings together complementary expertise, e.g. assessment of biologics and vaccines in NHPs, inhalation studies in all species, studies in minipigs including in reprotox and juvenile studies.”
Dr Le Bigot also attributes much of the group’s success to investment over many years in growth technologies such as genomic analysis, flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry and multiplex biomarker analysis as well as in highly relevant models such as NHPs or minipigs.
The group has also made a significant investment in the development and validation of in vitro predictive models.
“We view ourselves as a science-driven CRO and our long-term investments now enable us to start collaborations with our clients at an early stage of product development,” said Dr Le Bigot.
Dr Bigot continued, “We see this as a win-win strategy, as our scientists and program managers acquire detailed knowledge of our clients and their programs, thus saving time and increasing efficiency. In an increasing number of cases, we now help with the screening of lead compounds and continue to work on the candidate drug right up to the NDA (New Drug Application) submission.
“With close to 20,000 GeneChips processed yearly in its French site, CiToxLAB is today one of the major service providers in the field of preclinical and clinical genomics. We do not intend to stand still and are discussing several innovative projects, which may involve the group in specific investigations during clinical trials running in parallel with chronic toxicity studies. This sort of project may lead us to collaborate not only with our direct clients but also with some major clinical CROs,” he said.
