HVIVO PLC — M&A Activity 2020

Dec 31, 2020

National Storage Mechanism | Additional information

RNS Number : 1811K

Open Orphan PLC

31 December 2020

THE FOLLOWING ANNOUNCEMENT IS BEING MADE PURSUANT TO THE REQUIREMENTS OF RULE 19.6(C) OF THE CITY CODE ON TAKEOVERS AND MERGERS, WHICH, INTER ALIA, REQUIRES A PARTY TO AN OFFER TO MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT AT THE END OF A PERIOD OF 12 MONTHS FROM THE DATE ON WHICH THE OFFER PERIOD ENDED CONFIRMING WHETHER IT HAS TAKEN, OR NOT TAKEN, THE COURSE OF ACTION SET OUT IN ITS STATED INTENTIONS.

Open Orphan plc

("Open Orphan" or the "Company")

RULE 19.6(c) CONFIRMATION WITH RESPECT TO STATED POST-OFFER INTENTIONS WITH REGARD TO HVIVO PLC

Open Orphan plc (AIM: ORPH) announces that, further to the completion of its recommended share-for-share exchange offer for hVIVO plc which was declared unconditional as to acceptances on 31 December 2019, the Company has duly confirmed in writing to the Panel on Takeovers And Mergers in the UK in accordance with the requirements of Rule 19.6(c) of the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers (the "Code") that the Company has complied with its post-offer intention statements made pursuant to Rules 2.7(c)(iv) and 24.2 of the Code, as originally detailed in the Company's Rule 2.7 announcement of 9 December 2019 and the offer document published on 9 December 2019.

For further information please contact

Open Orphan plc			+353 (0) 1 644 0007
Cathal Friel, Executive Chairman
Arden Partners plc (Nominated Adviser and Joint Broker)				+44 (0) 20 7614 5900
John Llewellyn-Lloyd / Benjamin Cryer / Dan Gee-Summons
finnCap plc (Joint Broker)			+44 (0) 20 7220 0500
Geoff Nash / James Thompson/ Richard Chambers
Davy (Euronext Growth Adviser and Joint Broker)			+353 (0) 1 679 6363
Anthony Farrell
Walbrook PR (Financial PR & IR)	+44 (0)20 7933 8780 or openorphan@walbrookpr.com
Anna Dunphy / Paul McManus		+44 (0)7876 741 001 / +44 (0)7980 541 893

About Open Orphan (www.openorphan.com)

Open Orphan is a rapidly growing niche CRO pharmaceutical services company which is the world leader in the testing of vaccines and antivirals through the use of human challenge clinical trials. Conducted from Europe's only 24-bedroom quarantine clinic with onsite virology providing individually isolated rooms and connected to our specialist laboratory facility. hVIVO's challenge studies require healthy volunteers to take part, volunteers are recruited through FluCamp, learn more at www.FluCamp.com. The hVIVO facility offers highly specialised virology and immunology laboratory services to support pre-clinical and clinical respiratory drug, antiviral, and vaccine discovery and development.  Reliable laboratory analysis underpinned by scientific expertise is essential when processing and analysing clinical samples. Robust quality processes support our team of scientists in the delivery of submission ready data.

The Company has a leading portfolio of 8 viral challenge study models which are: 2 FLU, 2 RSV, 1 HRV, 1 Asthma, 1 cough and 1 COPD viral challenge models. As announced in early March, Open Orphan is rapidly advancing a number of Coronavirus challenge study models and expects to be helping many COVID-19 vaccine development companies to test their vaccines. No other company in the world has such a portfolio, with only two competitors globally having 1 challenge study model each. hVIVO also works with companies in the UK and Ireland to provide COVID-19 testing to staff to protect staff and customers from a workplace COVID-19 outbreak through its COVID Clear offering.

Open Orphan comprises of two commercial specialist CRO services businesses, hVIVO and Venn Life Sciences and is also building out a valuable data platform business. hVIVO has built up one of the world's largest databases of infectious disease progression data and we are populating our Open Orphan Health Data platform with this historical hVIVO data. In our clinical trials going forward, we are also planning to collect data on volunteer's via wearables during clinical trials. Therefore, Open Orphan's data, which may yield valuable digital biomarkers, could be one of the more sought-after datasets by many of the large wearables /smart watch wearables providers around the world. In June 2019, Open Orphan acquired AIM-listed Venn Life Sciences Holdings plc in a reverse take-over and in January 2020 it completed the merger with hVIVO plc in January 2020. Venn is an integrated drug development consultancy firm which offers CMC (chemistry, manufacturing and controls), preclinical, Phase I & II clinical trials design and execution. The merger with hVIVO created a European full pharma services company broadening the Company's customer base and with complementary specialist CRO services, widened the range of the Company's service offerings.

If you are interested in being contacted and provided with details about future COVID-19 human challenge study research, please leave your contact details at www.UKCovidChallenge.com.

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.

RNS may use your IP address to confirm compliance with the terms and conditions, to analyse how you engage with the information contained in this communication, and to share such analysis on an anonymised basis with others as part of our commercial services. For further information about how RNS and the London Stock Exchange use the personal data you provide us, please see our Privacy Policy.

END

OUPKKKBKQBDDQBN