Amersham Up On Myoview and Overseas

UK health care group Amersham International saw pretax profits for the six months to September 1996 rise 41% to L28.7 million ($47.3 million), on sales up 12% at L183.1 million. This was ahead of City expectations; Barclay de Zoete Wedd, for example, was forecasting pretax profits of L25.5 million. Amersham's share price rose 23.5 pence to L10.26 on the release of the figures.

Contributing to the good performance was the company's cardiac imaging agent Myoview; this product was launched in the USA early this year, and pushed up sales there by some 27% for the reporting period. Also showing improved performance was Japan, where Amersham's health care business was combined with that of its joint venture Nihon MediPhysics and its stake in the firm was raised to 50% from 20%.

License Deals Meantime, Amersham has concluded reciprocal royalty-bearing cross-licensing deals with PE Applied Biosystems (a division of Perkin Elmer) and Roche Molecular Systems, which will spearhead development in the growing market of high throughput DNA sequencing, the firm announced.