Maxcyte Share Discussion Threads

[2theduke] 11/5/2023 08:27

Urghh , really poor update on guidance and no commentary attached as to drivers. Whilst we will likely see the 2 commercial approvals - that's probably only resetting the losses from today.
This company has been trading for decades, the decline is poor and unexpected.
The only thing good in the short term is the cash - it's a strong support

[adamb1978] 11/5/2023 08:02

Hi mysteronz

Agree about the long-term nature of this rather than it being a quarter by quarter story. Guidance cut is frustrating - I can't imagine the world has changed drastically since their FY22 results in mid march so my assumption is that all thats changed is a new CFO has arrived and perhaps just scrubbed their customers' new term plans as a result? I also assume there's a certain amount of kitching sinking too

Adam

[74tom] 11/5/2023 07:52

That's a shocking guidance cut made to look worse by the CEO's selling (even if it is a pre arranged plan)...

I did some digging here a few months back and decided to avoid MXCT until the Crispr approval as I couldn't see any catalysts in the rest of their partner pipeline. Many of their license partners have been crushed in the NASDAQ biotech credit crunch & I suspect this is what has driven such an abrupt guidance cut.


June 22 lows were around £2.90, I'd be surprised if they aren't tested / breached in the coming days.

[mysteronz] 11/5/2023 07:17

All about the long term story here. SPLs continue to be signed and each day they are closer to (potential approval) and the money really rolling in.

Cash is good. Not going to lie a bit of a surprise guidance is cut this close to stating it a few months a go but the investment thesis is not based on flogging a few million consumables in FY23

[adamb1978] 10/5/2023 22:15

Options - someone mentioned a few posts back how these can be a mechanical plan.Costs - yes, was asked on the call. Response was that we will still have 200m cash at year end and we're investing for the long term. I agree with them on this - there is zero funding risk here given the huge amount of capital which they raised and I'd prefer them to invest to grow the business rather than penny pinch and horse away say $150m!

[trident5] 10/5/2023 22:05

But his options keep rolling. And costs have rocketed.

[adamb1978] 10/5/2023 21:38

Hi Nano

On the conf call now - DD saying that (i) 2022 seasonality was unusual as the world emerged from covid and (ii) some customers purchased consumables in advance ahead of regulatory approvals (ie CRISPR). Both of these caused an unusually strong H1 2022

Some plausible, but can form your own view

[nanopayments] 10/5/2023 21:35

The cell therapy business on a YoY basis has gone from +61% in Q2 22, to +27% in Q3 22, to +4% in Q4 22, to -19% in Q1 23. The weakness in Q4 22 was explained as "lumpiness", it is clearly more structural and an clear explanation wasn't given as to why it is happening. Worrying development.

[adamb1978] 10/5/2023 21:20

Dogs dinner of results. Trying to find something positive in them....struggling....though I guess that given expectations had seemed to be spectacularly reduced, these figures are in-line.

Other consolation is that this is a long term story rather than something short-term, so if 1 year is only marginally up, then you lose 1 years cost of money rather than the company having retreated

In terms of share price performance, things which might hold it up are:

(i) Share price having already been marked down as a result of the reduced guidance (results were in-line after all)
(ii) Positive CRISPR/exa-cel news from recent weeks

Most frustrating thing is that the 2023 guidance was only issued 2 months ago (15th March) so its a significant reduction in a short period

[adamb1978] 10/5/2023 21:15

OK, revenue was $8.6m and guidance has been severely reduced for the year. Still growth, but significantly reduced.

Earnings call at 930pm going to be lively

[trident5] 09/5/2023 17:03

NP - so, no discretion.
Completely agree with you on basing the reward on some performance goal.

[nanopayments] 09/5/2023 15:22

The stock options had already been issued. The timing and size of the sales are all predetermined in the plan. I would much prefer to see stock options get issued based on the achievement of performance goals, revenue targets etc, rather than the indiscriminate manner it happens currently, but I'm not reading anything negative into the fact the CEO sold 2% of his stock and option stake this week. That's not to say there won't be any negative developments, I just don't think you can infer that from his sales.

[adamb1978] 09/5/2023 15:20

I wonder whether the $8m - $9m is a result of something daft like the analyst putting all the SPL revenues for the year at the back-end. If you add a couple $2m to that range you're somewhere closer to where I'd expect Q1 to come out if its weak. Doesn't feel plausible to come off that much

[trident5] 09/5/2023 15:08

Does the plan require the issue of shares and their immediate sale with no discretion?

[nanopayments] 09/5/2023 15:03

Doug Doerfler's sales are part of a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Under that sort of plan, the amount, type of order and date are specified in advance. The insider selling and the brokerage company that executes the order have to certify that they aren't acting on material nonpublic information. I don't think the CEO is breaking the law. Those who post nothing but negative comments and see the boogeyman in every shadow may disagree.

[nanopayments] 09/5/2023 14:40

They reported Q4 2022 results and issued core revenue guidance for 2023 of 20%-25%. That was on 15 March, almost at the end of Q1, so if there was a big drop in core revenue in Q1, they knew about it when they issued guidance. Given that they rarely miss, that either means Q1 results won't be particularly weak, or if they are, that management is confident that there'll be a recovery over the remainder of the year.

[trident5] 09/5/2023 13:40

Hi - I thought your point was that he could only trade if things were in-line.

[adamb1978] 09/5/2023 10:54

Hi Trident

He could in theory know about positive news but would be odd to sell those shares when price would be expected to go up.

Adam

[trident5] 09/5/2023 09:34

And certainly no positive ones.

[adamb1978] 09/5/2023 08:24

Let's see tomorrow rgmgo. I agree with your expectation that Q1 would be weak, largely as a carry-over from Q4 commentary.

However, given that their commercial customers pay an annual license fee of $250k per instrument per year, and their research customers pay $150k per instrument per year, there's a large chunk of their core revenue (ie the non SPL part) which is recurring.

With that core revenue being $10.6m in Q4 last year, you'd therefore need the non-recurring (ie consumables) part of it really falling off a cliff and there being no SPL milestone payments for it to come in at $8m-$9m total.

One silver-lining, given DD has sold some of the shares which he's received from options in the last few days we know that there can't be any negative surprises coming up!

[rgmgo] 08/5/2023 23:04

The estimates are at a group level ie including an SPL contribution. They are not my numbers, so I'm not going to make any claims about their veracity. We know that one customer, presumably CRISPR, accounted for just shy of a quarter of revenue last year, so if I were trying to rationalise such a low 1Q sales figure I would guess the largest customer revenues fell precipitously & SPL revenues were also sharply lower. Working on the basis of anticipated exa-cel approval you can also rationalise the sharp rebound in the balance of the year as presumably commercialisation will require higher volumes than seen in the pivotal trial. I would argue that you can make an investment case for MXCT even in the absence of exa-cel approval (but that would move the growth curve materially to the right with associated short term share price implications). MXCT is far from a one product company but exa-cel undoubtedly plays a disproportionate role in 2023.It is also possible that The Street has been steered to a low number to achieve a material beat. My guess is that 1Q will be weak, but that is based on gut feel rather than analysis as I don't think there is enough info in the public domain to precisely forecast the quarter. As mentioned before, we will know soon enough.

[adamb1978] 08/5/2023 21:57

Hi rgmgo

Thanks - I haven't seen quarter by quarter forecasts. Is that $8m - $9m just their 'core' revenues i.e. excluding SPL? DD was quite understated on the last earnings call, however that's been his style over the few years which I've been invested. Q4 last year wasnt great given the various reasons mentioned at the time, but would surprise me if the $12.4m from Q4 dropped to $8m - $9m...

Adam

[rgmgo] 08/5/2023 19:12

Adam. I think consensus is materially lower for 1Q revenues in the $8mn to $9mn range. Aside from the obvious comment that quarters can swing around it appears that both cell therapy and SPL milestones could be materially lower, the former presumably reflecting the fall out of exa-cel pivotal trial revenues. If that is correct guidance clearly requires a dramatic pick up in the balance of the year. Presumably, the lack lustre chatter about 1Q has contributed to the recent weakness in the shares. Most of us are obviously on board for the longer term growth story rather than the quarterly trends, but again caveating that consensus can be wrong, 1Q may be a bit of a bump in the road. We shall see soon enough.

[adamb1978] 08/5/2023 14:54

Any expectations from people for the results on Wed? My thoughts are:

- >$11m revenue or over from the core business would be great

- wondering whether the program-revenue will spike given the exa-cel submission was completed in March? They'd guided to $6m for the year, and possible that there was a chunky fee recgonised at FDA submission and therefore in Q1. Obviously a larger one likely on approval

- on the cost side, we'd discussed on here a couple months back how the cost base growth rate seemed to be tapering down considerably. Will therefore be interesting to see whether that trend had continued.

Anything other than that (customers, product dev, guidance etc) is a bonus!

Adam

[davep4] 04/5/2023 19:37

I believe Walking Fish has raised USD 120m to fund development, I’m sure there’ll be future funding rounds. Remember Maxcyte will receive revenue from instrument and consumables during development of Walking Fish’s treatments.