12 September 2017                              

Cronin Group Plc

("Cronin" or the "Company")

Interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2017

Cronin Group Plc ("the Company") the AIM listed company with a business activity of the digitization of chemical space, announces its unaudited half year results for the period ended 30 June 2017.

Highlights:

·      Material progress in further developing the Company's strategic roadmap to digitize chemistry

·      Loss of £0.51 million after tax, reflecting continued research and development expenditure (2016 first half: loss £0.31 million)

·      Cash and short term deposits at 30 June 2017 of £4.29 million (31 December 2016: £4.79 million)

·      Net assets at 30 June 2017 of £8.41 million (31 December 2016: £8.92 million)

Mark Warne, Chairman, said:

 "The coming months will be a hugely exciting and transformational period for the company as it finalizes early beta product development and presents itself appropriately to its customer base, seeking to build credibility, awareness and understanding of its DigitalGlassware™ product and long term vision for the digitization of chemistry."

CHAIRMAN'S STATEMENT

I am pleased to report the Group has made material progress in the half year on technical implementation of our strategic roadmap to digitize chemistry, a key step on the path to the Group's ultimate vision of developing the capability for autonomous digital synthesis.

Digitizing chemistry will make it widely accessible by integrating real world chemistry with cloud computing, enabling new chemical molecules to be produced faster, cheaper and more reproducibly.   

Approximately 96% of all products manufactured are touched in some way by chemistry.  Innovation to drive down costs and create efficiency in chemical discovery and manufacture is considered a cornerstone for sustainable industry growth and profits. The digitization of chemistry will enable increased access and reproducibility of chemistry, leading to improvements in discovery and manufacturing, and ultimately, the directors believe, the use of Chemputers which are modular chemical robots. Applications will include bespoke chemical discovery, optimization, manufacturing and the ability to use artificial intelligence (AI) to direct molecule design. The Group's initiative in the digitization of chemistry to collect, codify and convey real-time execution, outcome data and associated context will structure humanity's understanding and experience of chemical space, and elements increasingly more common industry initiatives often described as the Internet of Lab Things (IoLT) and Smart Labs.

The Group has strengthened its Executive management during the period with myself taking on the role of Executive Chairman, Michael Bretherton being appointed Finance Director, and Richard Laming previously of Woolfson Microelectonics plc, joining the Executive to work alongside Chief Technology Officer Steve Coles as the organisation grows.  The Company now employees a team of 15 personnel including chemistry specialists, software and hardware engineers based at dedicated premises in central Glasgow.   The Group continues its research relationship with the team at Glasgow University, which is led by Cronin Group's scientific founder, Professor Lee Cronin.

The Group believes only high fidelity of data will truly enable making better chemical molecules, faster and more effectively. It has been stated that a large gap currently exists in chemical data reporting standards, rendering much of the currently available data unusable by algorithmic analyses.  It has been widely reported that researchers think that science faces a reproducibility crisis, with half, not having faith in published literature in their field - with chemists often reporting the most difficulty.

To this end the Group is entering beta development of our DigitalGlassware™ platform, comprising an easy to use software interface and a unique, low footprint sensor array, which will allow any individual to access reproducible chemistry, via internet protocols. Data analysis will not just be performed retrospectively, but in real-time and a-priori, delivering back to the users a product which dramatically increases reproducibility.  The product will be accessible to a broad community of users, including industrial and academic chemists, students, scientists from non-chemistry disciplines, scientific publishers, funding and professional advocacy bodies.

Financial Review

The Group incurred a loss after tax of £0.51 million for the half year ended 30 June 2017 (2016 first half: loss of £0.31 million), which mainly reflects our continued research and development expenditure in this period.

Net cash outflows of £0.50 million during this first six months reduced cash balances to £4.29 million at 30 June 2017 compared with cash balances at 31 December 2016 of £4.79 million.

Outlook

As we move from devising and developing program of work phases on our DigitalGlassware™ product, we keenly anticipate beta stage deployment with key innovators and early adopters, in preparation for addressing broader adoption among the target user groups.

The coming months will be a hugely exciting and transformational period for the company as it finalizes early beta product development and presents itself appropriately to its customer base, seeking to build credibility, awareness and understanding of its DigitalGlassware™ product and long term vision for the digitization of chemistry.

Mark Warne

Chairman

12 September 2017