hVIVO plc (AIM: HVO) told the market on 23 July 2026 that its orderbook had more than doubled to £65 million from £30 million at the start of the year, while revenue for the six months to 30 June 2026 fell to £16.3 million from £24.2 million in the same period of 2025. The update is unaudited, and the company said full-year revenue will be heavily weighted to the second half.
What the update reported
hVIVO expects adjusted EBITDA for the first half to be a negative mid-single-digit figure, against positive adjusted EBITDA of £3.0 million in the first half of 2025, and attributes the swing to the lower revenue base. It expects positive adjusted EBITDA in the second half. Adjusted EBITDA is stated before one-off exceptional items, which the company puts at nil in 2026 against £1.4 million in 2025.
Cash stood at £13 million at 30 June 2026, against £14.3 million at 31 December 2025, which hVIVO attributed to positive working capital inflows from recent contract wins. Proposal volumes were approximately 45 percent higher year on year. The board said its full-year revenue expectation is broadly in line with existing guidance of high single-digit revenue growth.
The company also disclosed a qualification to that outlook. Contracted client programmes remain in place, but timing shifts on certain programmes are expected to defer some revenue previously expected in the second half of 2026 into 2027. Chief Executive Yamin ‘Mo’ Khan described the half as one of the company’s strongest periods of new contract sales to date, and said the group now operates under a single brand across Consulting, Clinical Trials, Human Challenge Trials and Laboratory Services.
Why the orderbook comparison needs care
The £30 million starting point is itself a reduced figure. In its 2025 final results, published on 15 April 2026, hVIVO reported a weighted contracted orderbook of £30 million at 31 December 2025 against £43.5 million at 31 December 2024, and noted that the 2024 figure had been restated to match new orderbook inclusion criteria. The company described the shift as a more diversified revenue base carrying a greater proportion of smaller, repeatable contracts across four service lines.
Those results set out the trading base the July update sits on. Revenue in 2025 was £46.8 million against £62.7 million in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA was £1.4 million against £16.4 million, a margin of 3.0 percent against 26.2 percent. Basic adjusted earnings per share were negative 0.41p against 1.69p. Cash was £14.3 million at 31 December 2025 against £44.2 million a year earlier.
Individual contracts show how the orderbook rebuilt. On 7 May 2026 hVIVO signed a £6 million clinical trial agreement for an influenza human challenge study of a monoclonal antibody, to run at its Canary Wharf quarantine facilities with recruitment through its FluCamp arm and laboratory work in its own virology laboratory, with revenue to be recognised across 2026 and 2027. The company describes FluCamp as the largest specialist participant recruitment database in the UK and Europe combined, with over 400,000 volunteers.
Cash, acquisitions and the balance sheet
hVIVO built its four service lines partly by purchase. In 2025 it acquired two clinical research units from CRS for €10.0 million, adding early-phase trial services and cardiometabolic, immunology and renal impairment work, and bought Cryostore, a temperature-controlled storage provider, for £3.2 million.
The structure of the next deal was different. On 27 August 2026 hVIVO announced the acquisition of CRS Clinical Research Services Berlin GmbH, a Phase I/II unit with 32 beds including 18 intensive monitoring beds, specialising in dermatology and women’s health, with 350 studies completed to date. Upfront consideration is €0.025 million, with a three-year revenue-based earnout expected to reach approximately €6 million gross and approximately €4 million in aggregate payments to vendors after deductions for an acquired pension liability. CRS Berlin recorded unaudited EBITDA of €0.3 million on revenues of €10 million in 2025, had net assets of €0.1 million at 31 December 2025, and held an orderbook of approximately €10 million at 30 June 2026. The facility has worked alongside hVIVO since the acquisition of CRS Mannheim and CRS Kiel in January 2025.
Analysis: the second half has to carry the year
The two headline numbers point in opposite directions, and the reconciliation is scheduling. Contract research revenue is recognised as studies run, so bookings and reported revenue can move apart for several quarters. What the update establishes is that £16.3 million was recognised in the first half against a 2025 full-year figure of £46.8 million, and that the board still expects high single-digit revenue growth for 2026. On those two statements, the great majority of this year’s revenue has to be recognised between July and December.
That makes the deferral disclosure the most consequential sentence in the release. hVIVO says some revenue previously expected in the second half of 2026 is now due in 2027, while leaving full-year guidance broadly unchanged. Both can hold only if other contracted work starts earlier or larger than previously assumed, and the update does not quantify either side. A reader has no way to size the deferral from what has been published.
The orderbook doubling is real but narrower than it looks. Measured against the restated £43.5 million at the end of 2024, the £65 million figure is growth over two years rather than a break from a stable base, and the company’s own description of the new inclusion criteria says the mix has moved towards smaller, repeatable contracts. Smaller contracts convert faster and carry less single-client concentration, but they also make orderbook size a weaker guide to any one period’s revenue than it was when a handful of large challenge trials dominated.
Cash deserves separate attention because it barely moved while adjusted EBITDA turned negative. hVIVO states the reason: working capital inflows from recent contract wins. In this business those inflows are client payments received ahead of work performed, so the £13 million position reflects the same bookings that lifted the orderbook, and it will unwind as studies run. The 2025 comparison shows how quickly the balance can move, with cash falling from £44.2 million to £14.3 million across a year that included two acquisitions.
Against that background, the CRS Berlin terms are structured differently from the earlier purchases. Paying €0.025 million upfront with earnouts tied to revenue transfers the risk of the acquired unit underperforming to the vendors and leaves the group’s cash intact, which is a different posture from the €10.0 million paid for the earlier CRS units. Whether it works is measurable: CRS Berlin reported EBITDA of €0.3 million on €10 million of revenue in 2025, so the margin, not the top line, is what the earnout has to be judged against. The half-year statutory accounts, the size of the 2027 deferral, and the first period of consolidated CRS Berlin trading are the three documents that will settle what the July update left open.
