Sphere Medical Share Discussion Threads

[waterloo01] 24/11/2015 11:06

Note the 'Now in discussions'

Proactive Investors' One2One Investor Forum this Thursday the 26th November in Mayfair where the executive directors of Sphere Medical (LON:SPHR), Utilitywise (LON:UTW) & soon to be listed GrooveME will be in attendance

Sphere Medical (LON:SPHR - Market Cap: £16 million)
Sphere Medical is a company specialising in the commercialisation and further development of innovative medical monitoring and medical diagnostic equipment.
The company is now in discussions with potential partners that would help with the roll out of its breakthrough proxima blood monitoring device.
These discussions represent a key milestone as the company transitions into a commercial organisation centred on serving its customers, growing revenues and moving towards profitability.
Chief Executive Wolfgang Rencken will be at the forum to outline what share price catalysts potential investors should be on the look-out for.

[del44] 12/11/2015 19:39

I am out of country too Tim...
Enjoy down under... :-)

[timbo003] 12/11/2015 18:57

Thanks Aim_Trader

I normally go along to the proactiveivestors meetings, but I'm away at the mo' down under until Dec 1st, is anyone else planning to go along?

[aim_trader] 12/11/2015 11:18

Wolfgang Rencken, CEO, will be presenting to investors at the Chesterfield Hotel in Mayfair on the 26th November from 6pm. To register to attend, please click here:

[del44] 06/11/2015 12:38

Okay...from listening to the video above...the P4 has already been submitted for approval and are currently awaiting results...

[del44] 06/11/2015 12:25

Tim....
Did you mention that the P4 data bundle for CE is complete and awaiting to be submitted or has it been submitted?
I know there has been no rns but was wondering...cause it is getting late into the fourth quarter if it still hasn't been submitted...don't you think?
Cheers....

[timbo003] 06/11/2015 11:41

Thanks Tomps

Its a shame the video doesn't include the Q&As as they are often the most interesting and useful part of the presentation (and that was certainly the case at this meeting as far as I was concerned)

[tomps2] 06/11/2015 10:34

Here's Sphere's presentation by Wolfgang Rencken, CEO, at the ShareSoc Growth Company seminar on 21.10.15

hxxp://www.piworld.co.uk/videos/2015/11/4/sphere-medical-sharesoc-growth-company-seminar-21st-october-2015

[cc2014] 04/11/2015 19:53

Another 1m trade today but price hasn't moved at all and nor has L2. So delayed and already in the price action.

A most puzzling share

[timbo003] 04/11/2015 11:43

Thanks for that CC

Then there's the shareholders in the open offer who are tied up for 3 years to qualify for EIS tax breaks. I don't know how many shares that will account for, but the missus and I did 250K between us in the OO, so they are not for sale for at least another 2.5 years.

On the subject of the OO, I had an email from Richard earlier this week stating that HMRC had now given approval for the issue of the EIS3 certs, so they should be with shareholders later this week. That should make filling in this year's PAYE tax return much more fun!

[cc2014] 02/11/2015 19:55

As far as I can work out 90.7% of the shares accounted for. LGEN might still hold a few and there's probably a few more scattered around PI's not using the mainstream brokers and those using paper certificates.

So, not much in free float...

[del44] 27/10/2015 20:03

I was under the impression that as with increasing a holding in a company, if you reduce below certain levels, you had to inform the market.
Unless the AIM is a law on to itself.... Also there must be a time limit from when a threshold has been crossed, that a disclosure has to be made...

[cc2014] 27/10/2015 19:16

RNS - this is surprising. I believe it is down to Fidelity to make the disclosure not Sphere. Now I come to think of it I don't remember an RNS for the last lot Fidelity sold either.

As, for the buyer we know that every other purchase Woodford has made has been properly disclosed. I think we can therefore assume someone else has bought them.

[del44] 27/10/2015 14:50

Sure is.....
All currently in the bottom of a drawer right now.
Strange no rns yet?

[cc2014] 27/10/2015 13:11

Didn't realise it was still possible to hold paper certs...

[del44] 27/10/2015 08:00

I still hold old style certs..... :-)

[cc2014] 27/10/2015 07:20

Sphere website confirms Fidelity below 3% and seller. Don't know who bought them.

[cc2014] 26/10/2015 20:47

Your name may be included in these. Mine are ;-)

TD Waterhouse 1,890,000
Hargreaves Landsdown 1,880,000
Barclays 1,420,000
Smith & Williamson 449,000

Which takes us to 88% accounted for.

[del44] 25/10/2015 11:27

Glad my name is not there...just...LOL..

[timbo003] 25/10/2015 08:00

See slide 20 on the Sharesoc presentation slide deck, this clears up some of the historical questions we had about who's holding what:



Sphere: Major shareholders (29th Sept 2015)

[timbo003] 24/10/2015 22:15

One other thing I have just remembered from the ShareSoc meeting:

In response to a question during Q&As, Wolfgang said that it was always the intention to move production away from the Harston site and the current favoured location was now North Wales, rather than somewhere along the M4 corridor in South Wales. The final decision has not yet been made, but an ideal site would have clean room facilities already built and commissioned.

[timbo003] 24/10/2015 21:43

There is now also a new video on the Sphere web site of Wolfgang giving a very similar presentation at the recent Sachs 3rd annual MedTech forum (Sept 29th - Sept 30th):

[del44] 23/10/2015 15:03

Brilliant writ up Tim and really appreciate it...
Thanks again!!

[timbo003] 23/10/2015 14:04

There were around 50-60 people at the ShareSoc event on Wednesday night, with four companies presenting. Sphere were the last ones on with Wolfgang giving the presentation but Richard Wright the new CEO was also in attendance.


It is probably worth just putting up the links to my meeting reports for the last GM and the last AGM which cover quite a lot of the background and may answer some of the questions not covered in these notes

General Meeting (April 2015):


AGM (June 2015):



Wednesday’s presentations lasted for around 30 minutes each with around 15 minutes for Q&As, the audience were a bit more critical than at other similar metings (such as those organised by Proactiveinvestor and Shares Mag) with one of the CEOs (Elisabeth Gooch from EG solutions) getting quite a hard time during the Q&As.

The slide set used for Wolfgang’s presentation is here:


Wolfgang spoke to a number of slides (which I hadn’t seen before) concerning the concept of Patient Pathway Management (PPM) from admission to discharge for patients requiring critical care in an ICU (or ER) as part of their hospital visit (planned or unplanned).

Wolfgang went on to explain that he ICU unit is often a bottle neck in this process leading to log jams on hospital beds. he then described a number of scenarios where employing Proxima in place of existing blood testing methods could improve the flow of patients and free up nurses and hospital beds throughout the hospitals. He mentioned that the recent departure of the CEO from Addenbrooks was all down to inadequate PPM.

Sphere now have 4 sales reps, 2 in the UK and one each in Germany and the Netherlands. The selling cycle is around 6 – 9 months, the product is new and innovative and decision makers need to be educated on why they should change current processes, for example improvements in PPM along with less risk of infection, less transfusions, less risk of anaemia, better patient outcomes and less patient readmissions.

Wolfgang mentioned that for the USA patient readmission rates were of particular importance as US hospitals incur large financial penalties if patients are readmitted within a 30 day period of discharge.

I got the impression that we have still only sold one P3 unit (to the QE in Birmingham) but Wolfgang said we now had significant sales traction in both the UK and Europe and that he would expect to see a growing number of sales completed by the end of the year, furthermore P3 was providing a highly valuable learning experience which will help refine the selling process for all subsequent versions of Proxima (for both Sphere and Sphere’s commercial partner).

Hospitals will be able to upgrade easily from P3 to P4 and ultimately to P4a (see my AGM presentation notes). P3 is currently suitable for all measurements for pateints who are in ICU for respiratory problems, P4 will also include measurements of analytes for patients with cardiac problems and P4A will include additional analyte measurements for patients with sepsis.

It took 11 months to get CE approval for P3. Sphere hope that CE approval for Proxima 4 to be a speedier process. The data package for CE approval for P4 was completed in July 2015.

In response to a question during Q&As Wolfgang gave his thoughts on why OCD walked away: The OCD business is all about lab based equipment, to run tests on biological samples, it does not sell equipment for monitoring patients, in the old set up (when they were part of J&J) it was probably envisaged that another clinical orientated division within J&J would get involved with Proxima in addition to OCD. Therefore Proxima was outside the “Sphere” (excuse the pun) of OCD’s core expertise and they had decided to concentrate on their core competancies and pass on the Proxima option. They still retained their shareholding in Sphere. Wolfgang seemed fairly confident that Sphere would secure a partner for WW sales of Proxima (which may or may not include UK, Germany and the Netherlands). The broker forcast for sales in 2025 is $200m or which $100m would be booked by Sphere.

When I asked whether they would need more funds to reach breakeven, Wolfgang referred us to the recent Finnncap note which was freely available to attendees (I can provide details if you pm me), but the Finncap note basically says that they have enough cash until H1 2017, thereafter it will depend on rate of sales and the nature of the sales agreement with the commercial partner which could include an upfront introductory payment. When I asked how much any upfront payment might be, Wolfgang suggested I look at the comparable deals done for other small quoted companies in the sector which would give shareholders some sort of idea (I have not done this, does anyone want to volunteer?). For what it’s worth, Finncap estimate that Sphere should become EBITDA positive (£5m) and cash flow positive (£2.5m) in 2020.and their target price based on 10 year discounted cash flow model is 25.5p/share.

Neither Wolfgang (or Richard) knew who had been the recent big seller of Sphere shares, they have not yet been notified of a significant change in shareholding, but they confirmed that the seller earlier in the year was L&G.

nb. please feel free to copy and plaigarise etc

[del44] 22/10/2015 21:19

Cheers for that Tim!!
Still no RNS over the big trades recently.
Bit surprised although they can usually be declared within a week...