The synthetic antibody production company announced its financial results for its first six months ending June 30, 2007, with an operating profit of €3.5m for the first half of 2007, while total group revenues increased by eight per cent to €28.6m from €26.5m at the same time last year.
While the therapeutic antibody segment of the company continued to show strong growth with a 65 per cent contribution (€18.7m) to the total group revenue, the company stated the antibody direct (AbD) segment, which involves the production of antibodies for research purposes, had not been so strong.
MorphoSys public relations manager Mario Brkulj told in-PharmaTechnologist.com the AbD segment revenue was 10 per cent below the company's expectations, contributing only 35 per cent to the total revenues at €9.9m.
This was a result of the large acquisition of Serotec last year, which took four months longer than anticipated, Brkulj said.
As a result, the company has reduced its AbD segment profit goal from up to 10 per cent of segment operating profit to up to five per cent of segment operating profit and would now rev up the sales and marketing side to push the profitability of the segment.
Meanwhile, the strength of the therapeutic antibody segment marked the push of MorphoSys' partners taking the therapeutic antibodies into clinical trials.
Already three MorphoSys-produced antibodies are in Phase I clinical trials, the latest one, which is undisclosed, entered the first round of trials in the second quarter of this year. The two other partners, who make milestone payments, are GPC Biotech and Roche.
MorphoSys expected another three undisclosed therapeutic antibodies to enter trials later this year.
Seventeen therapeutic antibodies are in preclinical trials and 25 are in research.
In June, the firm presented preliminary preclinical data for MOR202, its proprietary therapeutic antibody for the treatment of multiple myeloma. The data showed that in an in vivo animal model, MOR202 demonstrated superior efficacy in comparison to Velcade (bortezomib), one of the better therapeutic options on the market for multiple myeloma patients.
MorphoSys achieved a net income of €2m in the first half of 2007, compared to a net income of €4.5m in the same period of the previous year.
The company projected total revenues of €60 to €65m and profit from operations of €7 to €10m for the fiscal year 2007.
The company currently has licensing agreements or research collaborations with a number of pharmaceutical and biopharma companies including Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, ImmunoGen, Merck & Co, Novartis and Pfizer.
