Ambri tightens its belt, looks for cash

Medical diagnostics company Ambri is striving to tap fresh funding sources while engaging in further staff and cost cutbacks to stretch dwindling cash reserves.

CEO and MD David Cornelius today told Australian Biotechnology News that he hoped to coax further commitments out of Dow Corning or Genencorp International, who paid $AUD5.5 million for about 7 per cent of Sydney-based Ambri last November.

That agreement also granted the two US multinationals options rights which, if exercised, would push up to another $AUD9.6 million into Ambri's coffers.

The problem for Ambri is that its share price this week was trading in the mid-30 cent range, well below the $AUD1.50 level which was the lowest market price at which exercising the options would make economic sense for the US companies.

"We will certainly approach them, but we have no commitments from either one at this stage," Cornelius said on Thursday in a phone interview from the US.

"My opinion is that [their attitude to further investment] will be based on the technical progress we make. If we continue to meet milestones, we will be able to get at least one of them to invest."

Ambri has revealed its March 31 cash reserves stood at $AUD8.8 million, or enough to sustain the company until about September at its current cash burn rate.

In its last quarterly statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, Ambri pegged the March quarter cash burn at $4.1 million, down from $6.4 million the previous quarter.

It also revealed another round of headcount reductions in April, leaving the company with 64 staff, down 35 per cent since November.

Cornelius said details of Ambri's new funding plans would be released publicly in early June.

"We have several funding options and we will be working this month to update our business plan and its key milestones and the funding needed to meet them," he said.

He said the plan was complete in general terms but needed more detail.

Ambri's technology is aimed at providing rapid diagnostic results in critical healthcare situations and has proven a bit more difficult than our initial plan envisaged, he said.

The end product is a totally automated machine which combines both reader and analyser functions and features a disposable cartridge in which Ambri's proprietary biosensor technology is embedded.

"It all depends on some complicated things happening together, but I am very optimistic that we are on the right path now," Cornelius said.