Late last month AMRI said it will reduce its US workforce and terminate the lease on one of its laboratories in Albany, New York, to cut costs, improve liquidity and save around $11m (€8.6m) a year.
CFO Mark Frost told Outsourcing-pharma.com the move – coupled with AMRI’s previously announced plan to halt internal R&D - will affect 30 employees, although only five jobs will be lost as most will be reallocated to other projects, including its collaboration with Eli Lilly.
He added that: “We are going from four to three sites in Albany by mothballing one facility because we determined we didn’t need the additional laboratory capacity.”
Frost set AMRI’s decision to halt R&D in the context of wider market dynamics, explaining that: “Post the 2008 economic crisis Big Pharma licensees want to see proof of concept and we never got into this [in house drug development R&D] to do expensive Phase II trials.”
He added that while AMRI will continue to seek partners for existing candidates – in deals similar to that signed with Bristol Myers-Squibb (BMS) in 2005 – the firm “does not want to put any more money into them.”
Fundraising flexibility
In other recent news AMRI has also filed a ‘shelf registration’ statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that – when effective - will allow it to offer up to $60m of common stock, preferred stock or warrants to raise funds.
In the document AMRI said that that any funds raised through such an offering will be used to repay debt, fund acquisitions or as working capital.