Pharmaxis just posted a $12.6m half-year loss, but it’s not as bad as it looks

Pic: REB Images / Tetra images via Getty Images
After making a $5.9 million profit for the 2018 financial half-year, drug developer Pharmaxis’ bottom line has fallen by 312 per cent.
For the 2019 half-year, Pharmaxis (ASX:PXS) posted a $12.6 million loss.
That seems extreme, and extremely bad — but it’s not quite so dire.
The reason for the gap is that Pharmaxis received a significant payment from German pharmaceutical giant Boehringer Ingelheim during the 2018 financial year.
In 2015, BI bought the rights to develop Pharmaxis’ fatty liver drug PXS-4728A and renamed it BI 1467335. When certain trial conditions were fulfilled, Pharmaxis received $42 million in milestone payments.
So Pharmaxis made $31.3 million in total revenue for the 2018 half-year, but with no milestone payments trickling in for the current half-year, that dropped to just $3 million in revenue and was the reason for the hefty overall half-year loss.
Shareholders were aware, and the company’s shares fell just 2 per cent on the news, to 26c.

Pharmaxis told investors back in November that “several large pharma companies” were interested in the company’s Lysyl Oxidase Like 2 (LOXL2) inhibitor compounds.
It is developing two LOXL2 inhibitor compounds to treat conditions such as non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH, or fatty liver) and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF, or a type chronic lung disease).
It also has two drugs currently on the market; Bronchitol, an inhaled dry powder for the treatment of cystic fibrosis, and Aridol, a lung function test for asthma.
Stockhead has contacted Pharmaxis for comment.
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