Shares in Anteotech Ltd (ASX: ADO) are spiking well into the green during afternoon trade and now change hands 12.5% higher at 22.5 cents apiece.
Whilst there's been no market-sensitive information from the company's end today, Anteotech did advise of an approximate $2 million research & development (R&D) tax incentive refund it received in an announcement.
What did Anteotech announce?
AnteoTech advised that it has received a cash refund of $1,965,463 under the Federal Government's R&D Tax Incentive Scheme.
The rebate relates to eligible R&D activities conducted by AnteoTech in both its Life Science and Energy divisions for the 2021 financial year, per the release.
For reference, the R&D Tax Incentive is an Australian Government program developed to assist businesses to "access tax offsets for expenditure on eligible research and development activities".
This refundable tax offset amounts to 43.5% of the expenditure on eligible research and development activities undertaken during the financial year.
Anteotech says that the funds will be reinvested into the continued development of its lateral flow test product
offerings for the EuGeni platform, with the remainder assigned to the AnteoX (cross-linker additive) program that is targeting increased electrode coating cohesion of lithium-ion battery electrodes.
Today's update follows on from previous news Anteotech released last week advising that the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) had contacted the company requesting it to review how its diagnostic test will cover COVID-19 variants.
This comes on the back of earlier momentum where the company claimed its rapid nasal swab test was successful in detecting COVID-19 in 1 minute with an efficacy of 97.3%.
Despite the series of updates, the market has expected more from the company and has thus punished its share price over the last 3 months.
In that time, Anteotech's shares have crumbled off a high of 27.5 cents to trade as low as 17 cents last week. However, following the update, they have reclaimed some territory and are now up 25% for the week and 13% for the month.
Anteotech share price summary
Despite the challenges in recent months, the Anteotech share price has climbed over 120% in the last 12 months, after rallying another 109% this year to date.
It has wobbled these past 6 months and has tested the 29 cents per share mark twice without success, and has been forced to bounce off a low of around 16–19 cents twice now.
One reason Anteotech is up so much over the longer time frames is that it is coming off a low base. In December 2020 it was trading at 10.5 cents, whereas it has reached a 52-week high of 43.5 cents in April and a 52-week low of 10 cents in February 2021.
