The UK genomics pioneer, based at the Babraham Research Campus, believes it could unlock a payback worth several millions from the rollout of its new ElasticAP software platform.
The company is understood to have ambitious revenue targets of £4m in two years – with a third coming from the new software platform – and around £10m in five years, with the majority from ElasticAP.
Eagle has a strong proposition for investors; it has an international, blue chip customer base and has been profitable each year since formation in 2008.
The young company is already considered something of a ‘veteran’ in applying cloud technology to solving life sciences problems. It outsources solutions for managing and analysing DNA data using bioinformatics – the analysis of complex biological data using computational techniques.
Eagle is acknowledged as the leader in combining cloud computing, Next Generation DNA Sequencing (NGS), open source and commercial software, to provide scalable, efficient genomics analysis to customers in the life science and, increasingly, adjacent sectors. The NGS market alone is worth $1.1bn and double digit growth is expected for the foreseeable future.
Besides its Big Pharma clients, the business has household name customers in biotechnology, crop science, bio-fuels, personal hygiene and animal health sectors, with a number of multi-year contracts capable of providing a robust future revenue stream. The current sales pipeline is thought to be around £2m.
The company has reportedly garnered 2011/12 revenues of around £0.7m from services and consulting but believes the ElasticAP technology will increase value for investors as SaaS business is more highly valued than consulting.
And although Eagle has achieved excellence in biological data management and analysis – eight out of 10 Big Pharma players use Eagle – it plans to extend the use of the new ElasticAP platform into other sectors, such as finance, government and telecoms.
Eagle believes ElasticAP solves the conflict between a global data deluge and a shortage of skilled bioinformaticians with the expertise to manage soaring demand.
ElasticAP is an SaaS platform. Software and associated data are centrally hosted on the cloud and accessed by the customer using a web browser. The customer is able to manage and analyse their own data without the intervention of Eagle, but using Eagle IP.
ElasticAP breaks silos by providing the secure storage, management and analysis of R & D big data within and across companies. Aimed at a broad market and suiting both biologists as well as bioinformaticians, the company plans in the medium term to sell the service across other sectors such as financial services, telecoms and government.
Importantly, the company will retain Eagle’s consulting services, both for revenue and to provide the data and IP to inform the ongoing development of ElasticAP.
The company boasts strong leadership with serial entrepreneur and academic Alan Barrell as chairman and the experienced David Flanders as CEO.
Eagle drew its inspiration and its name from the eponymous pub in Cambridge where the young business was founded – the same watering hole frequented by Crick and Watson who raced breathless into the hostelry one day in 1953 to declare they had discovered the double helix – unlocking the previously elusive structure of DNA.