The third best performing share on the UK market this year is about to update investors on its role in helping to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Byotrol (BYOT:AIM) is helping to save lives by supplying its novel hand sanitiser to the NHS, with a proven ‘kill claim’ against coronavirus. Its shares have risen by 213% year-to-date versus a 28% drop in the FTSE All-Share.

On 23 March it reported a ‘very substantial increase in demand’ for its infection prevention and control technologies, leading the company to say that full-year earnings to 31 March would exceed guidance given at its half-year results.  

It should tell the market in mid-April how many orders it had been able to fulfil by its financial year-end, thus putting a firmer figure on earnings guidance.

The company operates in a growing multi-billion dollar marketplace. It develops and commercialises market-leading antimicrobial technologies that safely neutralise and remove microbes from places where they can harm living things.

Its board includes Sean Gogarty, who was a divisional chief executive at Unilever (ULVR); and chairman John Langlands, who used to run British Polythene Industries, the largest producer of polythene film products in Europe.

Over the last five years the antimicrobial marketplace has become increasingly regulated in an effort to make products safer and ensure
that claims made are supported by verifiable scientific methods.

Since 2014 Byotrol has been developing proprietary chemistries which it knew would get regulatory approval, as well as meet a specific customer need.

Approved status means products are protected under national and super-national regulatory rules which give Byotrol opportunities to monetise intellectual property through licencing deals to third parties or alliances to produce finished products to the business and retail markets.

The company has built a focus and expertise in three areas: US surface care, regulated by the US Environmental Protection Agency; and EU surface and consumer personal care, both regulated under Biocidal Products Regulation.

Realising that it needed a specialist sales force, last year the company acquired Medimark, which has a pet care business but also brought a dedicated sales team as well as complementary products.

The firm recently struck a deal with SC Johnson Professional to supply its alcohol-free hand sanitiser formulation Invirtu to the UK and Irish health services, exclusively under SCJP branding.

Most recently the company announced a collaboration with Tristel (TSTL:AIM), the European leader in spores infection control. The idea is to combine their respective chemistries to launch a unique product which will kill all known viruses and bacteria on surfaces in less than two minutes and, crucially, last for up to eight hours.

Byotrol will receive a combination of fees based on supplying products and royalties based on success, with meaningful minimum guarantee payments.

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