IXICO boss says Medidata collab is poster child of partnership plans - ICYMI

After IXICO PLC (LSE:IXI, OTC:PHYOF, FRA:PYPB) reported a strong first half, with revenue growth and a rising order book pointing to increasing momentum in its core clinical trials business, CEO Bram Goorden joined Proactive to discuss the drivers behind the performance. These included contract wins, scaling analytics, and expansion into later-stage studies.

In the interview below, he also outlines how a new TechBio strategy and recent fundraising could open up recurring revenue streams through platform partnerships.

Proactive: I'm joined by Bram Goorden; he's the CEO of IXICO PLC. Bram, very good to speak with you. You're out your first half trading update this morning. Can you start by telling us what's driving growth?

Bram Goorden: Sure, Stephen. And thanks for having me. Always glad to be here. Obviously, this is an exciting time for us. We just announced what I think is a very strong first half. It's really a continuation of a trend reversal in 2025, which ended on a high as well, especially thanks to great growth at the second half of 2025. And so you see a continuation now in 2026. 23% revenue increase, I think is a headline here.

The main drivers to your question are more contracts. That's of course always what drives revenue. And I'll come back to which contracts we have secured because obviously there's a strategic focus there. Also contract extensions, which as I mentioned before. For me it's all about showing this extra value, which we have for clients, existing clients and how we continue to do more work with them.

And then I think, interestingly, what we're starting to see now as well is more volume, more analytics and what that shows, and I've said that before, is that we were operating, I would argue in the past as a company which was subscale, we have a platform that can be scaled that is ready for more scale. And so especially, for example, in March, we had a record high of revenue thanks to these analytics because we see volumes increasing and the company being able to fully do that.

So the type of contracts which we want, as I mentioned before, we're very much focusing on the Alzheimer space, on the Parkinson's space. In addition, of course, to this rare CNS space, which is really our bread and butter, as I always like to call it. And so we've been landing especially more of these Alzheimer's trials as well. And you'll see more of that Alzheimer's trials, which also are in other modality spaces.

We have been further validating some of the blood-based biomarker products that are out there, which is something that we're very excited about. And then lastly, moving towards these later stages in the clinical trial space. And by that I mean phase two, phase three, where obviously there's a lot of value for IXICO to be gained. And you saw us announce a big phase three trial win at the end of last year and then more recently also an extension in phase two.

So I would argue that all these drivers that we said there in order to drive revenue have now indeed started to be unlocked. And that's what you see coming in action.

Proactive: In terms of the existing business model, what might we see over the next six months in terms of focus?

Bram Goorden: Yeah, I sort of jokingly always like to say more of the same, and I think that is also what is expected and what shareholders, investors are expecting. But it's true, right? I mentioned that we were operating in the past subscale. So it's all about scaling up now, making sure that we have the revenues that also drive a better margin.

And that again is something that you've seen as well. We've brought our margin to 53%. That's 4% points better than the same period last year. We're going to continue to drive that because that will also bring us then to profitability. In terms of EBITDA, we were just shy of negative half a million for this half. And so clearly there as well, you see that we're now getting much closer to profitability.

And the way we're doing that is by further filling our order book. The order book is at a record high since several years at 18.1 million. That's a 38% increase. And by driving that order book, of course, we now get that scale that will also drive further profitability. So this is really the focus definitely for the remainder of the year.

Proactive: What are your key priorities as you start to implement the new TechBio strategy highlighted in your recent fundraising?

Bram Goorden: Yeah, I'm glad you asked that. So we're changing register a little bit if you wish. Indeed we announced a 10 million raise which is big for the size of the company that we are. I'm delighted to see current and new shareholders showing support in this capital raise. And so this is really going to unlock a whole new set of revenue drivers, but especially also value drivers.

So we've been very busy as we just discussed this first half with our existing business. We'll continue to make sure that this goes in the right direction. We've always promised at least 15% growth, so I think with 23% this half we're clearly exceeding that. But then with this raise, we're now going to start to do different things with our platform.

And the way I like to phrase it is that the platform is going to start to live in the hands of other users, other players in this clinical trial space than only the IXICO experts. What I mean by that is we're going to partner the platform, and we're going to also derive revenue in a different fashion there. It's going to be recurring revenue because we believe that the platform can be licensed, can start to be partnered.

In order to do that, we need to standardize and automate the platform so that we can integrate it with these partners. That requires investments, investments that we will now be able to do that.

And the way for me to bring this out and also really prove it was by actually signing one partnership that really brings it to life.

And so I was delighted that a few weeks ago we could announce this Medidata collaboration, which I think is sort of the poster child of what we're trying to achieve here. Medidata is the biggest electronic data capturing provider in the clinical trial space. They're serving 18 of the 25 big pharma clients. They are serving 80% of all clinical research organizations.

And so for them to come to us and want to partner with this precision analytics technology, which we have, and for us then to utilize that power that they have in terms of reach and in terms of impact in the space, I think is sort of the best example of what we're going to try to bring to life.

So stay tuned for that. I want to talk about more details here, but I think for now we're going to celebrate the growth with our core business over the past six months.

Proactive: Congratulations on those numbers Bram. Thank you very much for your time today.