Stories
Nuritas is one of those high potential start-ups that the government and state agencies like to talk about. Founded and headquartered in Ireland, it operates at the cutting edge of bio technology and has a blue chip roster of shareholders and backers.
Led by its founder, the mathematician and bioinformatics specialist Dr Nora Khaldi, it uses big data techniques to discover peptides – molecules in food and food by-products – that can be used by the life sciences sector in supplements and new drugs. Potentially, it is a gamechanger.
And that potential was enough to convince the European Investment Bank to invest €30 million in the business in 2018. It had previously raised €26 million, including €17.5 million in a series A round led by Chicago-based Cultivian Sandbox Ventures in late 2017.
Other backers of the company include U2’s Bono and The Edge, Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, and angel investor Ali Partovi.
The company has just issued new accounts, outlining its performance for 2019 and offering commentary about the impact of Covid-19. At the end of 2019, the company had retained losses of €11 million, which was up from €5.6 million for the year before. However, as with any early-stage biotech firm, this is not unsurprising as it is research and innovation led. Indeed, it still closed the years with positive equity of €9.3 million on its balance sheet.
Plus, the accounts are historic. The real detail, however, is in the company’s accompanying notes and commentary.
“Due to the uncertainty of the outcome of the current events, the company cannot accurately estimate the company’s financial position, results of operations or cash flows in the future,” the accounts state.
It adds that the directors “recognise the existence of a material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt on the company’s ability to continue as a going concern. As a consequence, the entity may be unable to realise its assets and discharge its liabilities in the normal course of business”.
However, it states that given the “financial resources available to it together with strong relationships with a number of investors, lenders and customers. Therefore, the directors have concluded that the company has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future.”
The documents also outline its status with its customer and funders. It said that Nuritas had recently completed phase I of a financing round. “This financing round remains open to future investors and it is expected that the company will receive further equity investment in the coming months as part of a phase II financing however this phase II financing is not yet secured.”
It added: “The company has agreed a facility with the European Investment Bank (EIB) in November 2018, for which it can draw down funds upon the achievement of agreed milestones. The company continues to track towards these milestones as well as continued engagement with the EIB with a view to drawing down on these funds in the coming 12 months. Confirmation of ability to drawdown on these funds has been verbally agreed but not yet formalised.”
Nuritas said that it was “in late stage negotiations with a number of commercial partners and expects to close material commercial arrangements in the coming months. Further commercial opportunities continue to present themselves in all markets in which the company is operating”.
It said that the company has availed of “certain government measures arising both in the normal course of business and also due to the impact of Covid-19 on trading conditions at present”.
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Fellerim is an interesting company. Owned by the McGlade family, it houses their interests in the Thérapie beauty chain business as well as Pygmalion, the Dublin bar and restaurant. The company bought out the 50 per cent of the bar during 2019, and, consequently, the company saw a boost in revenues.
All told, the company had revenues of €42.3 million in 2019, up 61 per cent on 2018 when the figure was €26.3 million. The Pygmalion buyout added €4.8 million to turnover, with the rest of the increase attributed to increased business at the clinics and also the opening of a string of new outlets in Ireland and the UK, where it opened five new outlets. The accounts state that a further six have opened since 2019.
Some €30 million of that revenue number was generated in Ireland, with €4.1 coming from operations in the North. England and Scotland contributed €5.7 million and €2.1 million respectively.
The company made a pre-tax profit of €1.9 million, a big jump on the previous year when it posted a profit of €73,000. It closed the year with retained profits of €6.8 million.
On an EBIDTA basis, it made €4.9 million in 2019, up from €1.6 million the year before. The company said it temporarily closed all of its outlets as a result of Covid last year and when they were allowed to reopen trading was “satisfactory”.
Thérapie is continuing to expand. It has just taken over 10 new clinics in London which were previously called Skinsmiths. Thérapie now has a total of 55 Clinics.
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