20 December 2016

Avacta Group plc

("Avacta" or "the Group" or "the Company")

Director/PDMR Shareholding

Avacta Group plc (AIM: AVCT), the developer of Affimer® biotherapeutics and research reagents, announces the following changes to the equity incentives of its Chief Executive Officer, Alastair Smith, its Chief Financial Officer, Tony Gardiner and its Chief Operating Officer, Craig Slater.

The three Directors have waived their annual performance bonus awards in respect of the year ended 31 July 2016 and have instead been granted share options under the Avacta Group plc Executive Share Option Scheme exercisable at the current market price in order that their interests continue to be strongly aligned with the longer terms interests of shareholders.

The number of options which have been granted and fully vested are exercisable at 74p are as follows:

·      Alastair Smith - 74,325 options over Ordinary Shares

·      Tony Gardiner - 22,973 options over Ordinary Shares

·      Craig Slater - 31,352 options over Ordinary Shares

Trevor Nicholls, Avacta Group Chairman and Chairman of the Remuneration Committee said:

"In a year in which the Company has made good progress with its Affimer technology, but that has not yet been reflected in the share price, the Board unanimously felt that it is right to strongly align the executives rewards with those of shareholders. Therefore, the executive team has decided to waive their bonuses in favour of longer term equity driven value. This reflects the confidence we have in the future value of the Affimer technology and the team's commitment to delivering it to shareholders."

Enquiries:

Notes to Editors

Avacta Group plc (www.avacta.com)

Avacta's principal focus is on its proprietary Affimer^® technology which is a novel engineered alternative to antibodies that has wide application in Life Sciences for diagnostics, therapeutics and general research and development.

Antibodies dominate markets worth in excess of $50bn despite their shortcomings. Affimer technology has been designed to address many of these negative performance issues, principally; the time taken to generate new antibodies, the reliance on an animal's immune response, poor specificity in many cases, and batch to batch variability. Affimer technology is based on a small protein that can be quickly generated to bind with high specificity and affinity to a wide range of protein targets.

Avacta has a pre-clinical biotech development programme with an in-house focus on immuno-oncology and bleeding disorders as well as partnered development programmes. Avacta is commercialising non-therapeutic Affimer reagents through licensing to developers of life sciences research tools and diagnostics.

The information communicated in this announcement is inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation 596/2014.

Notification and public disclosure of transactions by persons discharging managerial responsibilities and persons closely associated with them