Henderson Morley seeks £1m

Bombed-out anti-viral treatment developer Henderson Morley plans to focus on animal vaccines as it taps the market.

The Birmingham-based biotech company is offering shares at a virtual all-time low of 0.25p both to new investors and existing shareholders, adding for the latter a sweetener of one free share with every ten they buy in the issue. AIM-quoted Henderson’s executive chairman Andrew Knight and fellow directors have underwritten enough new shares to ensure the company collects a minimum £250,000.

Henderson, which lost £548,000 in the six months to last October, originally floated on AIM eight years ago to develop its patented Ionic Contra Viral Therapy (ICVT) as a treatment for herpes, warts, verrucae and kindred human ailments. Knight grumbles that three companies to which ICVT was licenced failed to do much with it and says the company is now talking to ‘several parties’ about selling ICVT for human applications and
concentrating on vaccines for animals, particularly carp and other fish and domestic cats and dogs, since pet owners are considered less likely to haggle over price than farmers.

Knight says this strategy should make the company ‘more focused’, but concedes that biotechnology is a ‘slow burning fuse’. At 0.3p, against 2001’s 4p float price and a 2006 high of 5.78p, the shares remain speculative.