Summary of today’s result

Up-and-coming biotech company PolyNovo has cautioned investors that it still expects its revenue to be lumpy, despite achieving a massive 80 per cent jump in revenue to $10.2 million and flagging accelerating sales.

The company's biodegradable temporising matrix (BTM) is effectively a scaffold for burns and wounds and is its first commercial product leveraging its NovoSorb polyurethane-based polymer. This polymer helps the body to use its own mechanisms to repair damaged tissue and then breaks down into carbon dioxide and lactic acid, which is excreted through a person's urine.

Sales of its BTM hit a new record in December, having received a boost from New Zealand's White Island volcanic eruption and the local bushfires as well as strong US sales.

Commenting on the result, PolyNovo chief executive Paul Brennan said highlights in the half included getting regulatory approval in Europe and the first usage of its BTM on patients in the region, being awarded breakthrough technology status by the US Food and Drug Administration, and the commencement of construction of a "cleanroom" manufacturing facility for its hernia repair and breast reconstruction product.

"The past half year has been exciting for all of us because many of the areas of our business are experiencing rapid and dynamic growth," Mr Brennan said.

PolyNovo chief executive Paul Brennan and principal scientist Tim Moore are commercialising its product to treat burns and severe wounds. Eamon Gallagher

Of PolyNovo's $10.2 million in revenue, $8.6 million was derived from its BTM sales (an increase of 129 per cent) and $1.6 million came from a clinical trial program.

While the $1.8 billion company reported strong revenue growth, its net loss after tax widened to $2.4 million, which included an $880,000 share-based payments expense. Excluding this, its underlying loss narrowed.

On the back of the result, PolyNovo's shares slipped 10.6 per cent in morning trade to $2.70.

The company has had such a rapid rise in share price and interest from investors in the last year that its earnings call on Wednesday is the first one the company has hosted. Even with its share price slipping on Wednesday, the business is still trading up 265 per cent in the last 12 months.

Spun out of the CSIRO and developed by former PolyNovo chief executive Laurent Fossaert, principal scientist Dr Tim Moore and the Royal Adelaide Hospital's Professor John Greenwood, the NovoSorb-based BTM looks like a foam-like sheet and is used to treat severe wounds and burns, where the dermal layer of skin has been lost and requires a skin graft to close.

Mr Brennan, who spent the first 17 years of his career as a nurse, before moving into medical sales, came across PolyNovo and the NovoSorb technology while working at his previous employer, Smith & Nephew. He had proposed that Smith & Nephew buy PolyNovo, but when it didn't, he decided to quit and join the local biotech.

PolyNovo forecast that it would double BTM sales for the 2020 full year and the company said it had a clear path to breakeven, with two months in the half breaking even.

While the company has had traction in the dermal market, it expects it to make up a smaller chunk of its revenue within five years, with its hernia and breast reconstruction products in the pipeline believed to have a larger addressable market.

The company has also set out a longer-term vision to develop drug-eluting polymers, capable of modulating the elution of a drug into surrounding tissue.