Oxford Biomedica Share Discussion Threads

[supernumerary] 22/5/2025 21:35

Yes - why not? If you've got cautious buyers and careful sellers that's exactly what you'd expect.

[dominiccummings] 22/5/2025 21:26

Let me try my point another way.

Is it normal/likely that every day for more than 3 months, on a variety of volumes, the matching numbers of sellers turns up for the number of buyers?

[dominiccummings] 22/5/2025 21:22

I'm sure it will Gareth.... PS leave the Welsh out will you?

[gareth jones] 22/5/2025 20:42

Tempus revelat omnia.

[supernumerary] 22/5/2025 20:19

At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, I don't think OXB's position is helped much by having a US administration that's so clearly anti-pharma and anti-science. It does make US investors reluctant to take new positions in the space; I guess the big boys will understand the risks in biotech and expect a long wait for their return with lots of ups and downs along the way, but maybe that's good enough for a hold, but not for a buy?

Ask yourself - would you invest millions of dollars (even someone else's!) in biotech at the moment, given that Trump has declared (for instance) that he wants US pharmaceutical prices to match the best of those available anywhere abroad? Nobody seriously thinks he'll go through with it, but the fear that he might, or the unintended consequences along the way, are quite enough to keep pocket-books closed until matters become clearer.

I've just battened down the hatches, to await the passing of the storm and the blue skies ahead - I strongly doubt it's a Bayesian, but I guess they did too. Time will tell.

[harry s truman] 22/5/2025 19:29

Lots of things with OXB don't compute Dom.

I obviously don't mean to suggest the "they are going bust and hiding it" type things beloved of our fringe lunatics, but lots of us have sat here for decades and so we have a very good idea of what is usual / normal for this company.

Last time they went all quiet then 6 months later they swapped ABL for new shares.

The current news is (OXB's favourite word of old) transformational - but unless you dialled into the webcast and listened then how would you know? Perhaps the company has held private briefings, but one to the Times or the FT would have been nice for us. Newspapers don't turn down free stories (which sell ads) in this age, so why not?

I sort of understand if it's simply that the current OXB management don't care for shareholders. That's far from unusual in lots of companies and the reality is that we just don't really matter to them that much as when it comes to the votes they can soon ring around the big holders and get enough proxies anyway.

It could simply be the economy in the UK, which I suspect it actually much worse than they tell us. Assuming that most small PIs will be British then I would imagine we now have a fraction of the number we had when OXB was in the papers every day with covid and Rishi / Boris were paying people to stay at home / offering loans to do it. Different world today.

Then there are the bigger holders (serious money people) and perhaps possible bidders who will be looking at UK HMG business policy and wondering what will happen next to pay for the next pay rises, island giveaways, punitive trade deals and wars which our leaders are keen to join. Maybe another hike in business costs alone wouldn't put potential overseas investors off, but it might be the final straw which made an investment somewhere else look more attractive?

We talk about the long period which looks and feels like a closed period, but it is possible that has encompassed multiple things coming and going rather than simply one massive embargo over the same single issue.

[dominiccummings] 22/5/2025 18:06

All very well to debate likely/unlikely bids that we haven't yet had. I've heard whispers of private equity sniffing too. However, the fact is that the share price has been 'range bound' at these low levels for 3 months.

Company estimates of growth and positive analyst reports have had NO effect on the desirability of OXB shares.

How so? Damned if I know.

Share turnover remains pathetic and has only increased at all when we have had an institutional seller and those sales have been (thankfully) swallowed by (presumably) Briarwood.

Something just doesn't compute?

[harry s truman] 22/5/2025 15:10

This is something which will only be decided / proven if / after it happens Phil, and at that point it's sort of redundant who was right (or righter) anyway.

I mentioned above that Brammer has gone, but of course for ages our main / only rival was Bluebird (literally odds on that if xyz wasn't using OXB then they were almost certainly using Bluebird). There just weren't that many offerings about.

Although I do it myself I think the simple sales multiple undervalues the company because it includes nothing for the LentiVector IP and knowhow which comes with OXB's 30 years in the game - and as OXB often say, where do you find another company with 25+ years of doing this?

Brammer obviously owned by Thermo Fischer now. Charles River bought Vigene Biosciences. Bluebird split up on its way down, but is now owned between BMS and Carlyle and SK Capital.

It's thin pickings now unless you want to go to China and have everything copied.

The communications company will only do what Frank asks them to do and at the moment that seems to be to host our webcasts.

[marcusl2] 22/5/2025 14:54

Novartis has announced it will present new data at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting taking place between 30 May and 3 June, and the European Haematology Association (EHA) 2025 Congress taking place between 13 and 16 June.

CAR-T therapy YTB323 study in large B-cell lymphoma.

[philh75] 22/5/2025 13:47

Thanks — a brilliant summary of where we agree, and a very fair framing of where we differ.

I completely agree on the fundamentals — OXB is no longer in transition; it’s arrived.
The revenue, infrastructure, pipeline maturity, and commercial readiness are all real, measurable, and accelerating. And you’re absolutely right that the recent performance (+44% growth last year, 28% guidance this year, and £220m visible next year) is exceptional in this sector.

Where I strongly diverge, though, is on the acceptable valuation multiple — especially in the event of a takeover.

You rightly point out that analysts are using 3–4x sales as a framework. But that’s a backward-looking multiple driven by:
• Short-term sentiment
• Liquidity issues
• Poor comms and visibility
• And the temporary overhang from institutional sellers

That does not reflect the value of a specialist CGT CDMO with global GMP coverage, a strategic relationship with Novo, 6 late/commercial programs, and a reserved bioreactor with Serum that could flip the revenue model overnight.

Let’s be clear:

If OXB were sold at 3–4x sales (~£5–6), it would be one of the great giveaways of UK biotech.

Even at 6–7x, we’re only talking £12–£15 per share — which is still conservative given the trajectory, strategic scarcity of these assets, and what we know of CDMO M&A multiples.

Selling for £3–£4 would be an unmitigated failure — not just for long-term shareholders, but for the UK life sciences ecosystem more broadly.

We all agree this is a waiting game. But let’s be honest:

Waiting 20 years to see OXB handed off at half its fair value isn’t a minor disagreement — it’s the one line that shouldn’t be crossed.

Appreciate your thought leadership and how you bring the board together. Just wanted to make sure that in our spirit of agreement, we’re not normalising a valuation that would represent a real loss of what this company has built — and what we’ve all endured to hold.

[harry s truman] 22/5/2025 13:34

Pretty sure I've written this a lot, but:-

I think Novo Holdings bought into OXB for a piece of the cell therapy / gene therapy market and / or were seduced by first commercial / best lentiviral vector.

Novo Holdings plainly (there is a c5 year gap between deals) bought Catalent because it was the only way to get Catalent's 3 fill finish pen injectable factories as a running start to get them out of a position where supply shortages meant that their super-lucrative weight loss drugs could be "compounded" by pharmacies to meet demand.

I'm sure that those two events were completely unrelated when actioned, but since we have of course heard the boss of Novo Holdings say that he intends to use weight loss dividends to buy up speciality service providers to the industry and also that rather than breaking up the remainder of Catalent (the bits Novo Nordisk didn't want) and selling them off into the trade, they actually intend to grow their own large CDMO by doubling it in size within 5 years.

My point here is simply that what started off unrelated and c5 years apart may now strike them as blindingly obvious / staring them in the face as Catalent has 2 cell therapy factories which would normally be downstream of OXB and facilitated by our partners.

If Novo aren't going to go on a spending spree to double the size of remainder Catalent then I don't know how they plan to do it as simply doing first class work / pleasing customers doesn't double the size of Lonza and TF every 5 years.

For valuations I wrote only recently in that as Thermo Fischer has previously bought an OXB similar in Brammer (you never have exactly, only similar) then there is your example which the market / analysts / commentators will cite when they decide what is or isn't a fair price to offer for a company like OXB.

[tuco 1] 22/5/2025 11:13

Excellent post Xoptimist - bravo .

Tuco.

[harry s truman] 22/5/2025 09:28

Mentioned before Dom, but I have a feeling that the closing (last 10% currently in progress) payment to old Homology shareholders might be key to what happens next.

It's secret squirrel as always these days with OXB, but:-

They have spent a lot of money on Boston at a time when OXB policy is very tight financial controls.

Money on a LentiVector hub and also expedited work to get the facility approved for production of licenced commercial medicine and not just clinical trial material.

As Seb said in the webcast (words to the effect that) they would be ready for that in the next few quarters.

Ready for what? Not enough time for the many early AAV deals to be anywhere near commercial. Have they poached / attracted a late stage AAV customer from someone else - or are they lining up for LentiVector commercial supply in the continental US territory soon? If not, why spend the money now? Slim possibility that it's also something non-AAV / non-LV which OXB doesn't currently have time / space for in Oxford.

[boadicea] 22/5/2025 09:11

My last two trades in OXB have been handled through CBOE.
What proportion of trades are bypassing LSE?

[dominiccummings] 22/5/2025 09:02

Thanks steeple, adds a bit of understanding.

[steeplejack] 22/5/2025 08:50

Could just be a function of the order in which marketmakers close down their quotes at the end of the day.We see the 'touch' price ie the best bid and the cheapest offer.If you have just one MM up on the bid and he closes down his quote,that will consequentially lead to lurch down in the touch price.Frankly,having spent years staring at level two on office monitors,i think that level two can be more a distraction than a benefit.Last thing private investors want to do is waste time double guessing the shenanigans of MMs,they won't win.Volatility in the OXB price is primarily a function of a lack of liquidity,a thin market.The NMS in OXB isn't in reality larger than 5000 shares ie around 15000 quid.It is more than likely that there is one perhaps two MMs who are more active in trading OXB shares than their competitors who are just also rans.Its when the more active MMs open up their quotes that you get a realistic quote 'touch' and a narrowing of absurdly wide spreads but this reverses when a more active MM closes down his quote at the end of the day.

[gareth jones] 22/5/2025 08:26

17,523 ordinary trade at 8.08am (299p) someone eager?

[dominiccummings] 21/5/2025 20:27

A broker moves the price up when he finds it difficult to obtain enough stock to satisfy buyers.
A broker moves the price down if he is overstocked and needs to sell what he gets easily from sellers.

What causes a broker to move the price down a whole percent at close or after close?

Can someone more experience tell me, as it has been happening with great certainty for the last two or three months?

[harry s truman] 21/5/2025 18:17

Yep, very nice PB, but... (and as mentioned the other day) with the way the winds are blowing do we think we will all still own our little bit of OXB in 2027 or will it be someone else celebrating the likely new work?

Appreciate that OXB isn't a biotech these days, but in my personal experience of watching bios for longer than I care to remember, there is a very obvious pattern where the big guys are happy for the little guys (i.e. us) to sit through all the high risk fund and spend years, but as soon as the rewards are on the near term horizon then they want those future profits for themselves.

We've talked possible takeovers for years and if/when that happens we are an irrelevance, but we are now in our return to profit year and such...

Volume of late has been pitiful - we've had better days during the Christmas holidays. OXB may well be doing the rounds with the pro-investors but if any of those are buying then where are the trades. If OXB are selling the dream to small shareholders then I've not seen it. I'm certain Frank could give The Times another free story if he wanted to. For some reason he doesn't want to. We just have to wait and see.

[pharmaboy3] 21/5/2025 17:38

We finally managed to squeeze Cabaletta Bio into a meaningful message to investors!HTTps://www.linkedin.com/posts/oxford-biomedica_asgct2025-advancedtherapies-viralvectors-activity-7330964503326584832-BNGE?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android&rcm=ACoAAAGg2vgBut6BGhdXfvJJyYw4rJkgA11KIBA

[harry s truman] 21/5/2025 11:18

I actually chose TF because they relatively recently bought an OXB and are sat just below the average.

If I had wanted then I would have picked Samsung



If the company is OK then it should be somewhere close to 5.5x and anything making it more than OK (C&GT specialist or whatever) then better. At the moment I'm still concentrating on just getting back to average.

You know I'm normally very supportive of OXB, but I do think this policy of saying next to nothing between the results these days (I accept there may be issues beyond our control here) is not helping.

End of next week is the next quarterly review for the FTSE250 and what are our chances of being £4.82 by then? Even I will say slim.

[steeplejack] 21/5/2025 11:04

I'm not convinced that a comparison with Thermo Fisher Scientific is appropriate given the very size of TMO and its range of operations but the 5x sales ratio is fair enough as a benchmark.We're at the five bar gate again ie 310p but the lack of volume suggests that investor interest is muted reflecting,in part,the company's 'timid' investor relations.The shareholders list confirms that an appreciation of OXBs merits are more evident among the industry than among institutional or private investors hence the oft made suggestion that OXB will ultimately be taken over.

[harry s truman] 21/5/2025 10:31

Morning all. I'm not sure 4k shares in the first 2 hours this morning is going to do much for the dandruff shampoo formation (it's the way I tell 'em).

Getting my coat and moving swiftly on... just a quick reminder or where OXB "should" be, now that they are through the valley of death and everything which has been thrown at them.

Thermo Fischer is a much bigger company than OXB, but it is "similar" wrt performing CDMO services and such.



So roughly 5x sales there.



With OXB you can see the covid mania here where we had quite a premium after bunter's SAGE committee had told the market that we would all be on covid boosters every 6 months forever. 2020 9.39x sales. 2021 7.37x sales. Then our world is put on its head as AZ leaves the covid vaccine market and we pump basically all of our covid windfall into the Homology partnership with very unfortunate timing.

After that, 2022 the market had us on 3x sales and 2023 on a valuation of 2.37x sales. 2024 and you can see the rehabilitation has started now. Not all sins forgiven by any means, but 3.37x sales is a step back in the right direction.

OXB should also be at the premium end of CDMO (big companies like Thermo also make a lot of boring mass production / lower margin stuff than C&GT).

OXB told us a few weeks ago that 2025 initial guidance is £160 million - £170 million revenue, which of course will change with anything pending which they haven't announced yet.

£165m mid guidance x that rough 5x sales ballpark valuation is £825m market cap.

OXB have 106m shares at the latest count meaning £7.78 per share on mid initial guidance for this year with nothing speculative included.

I know not everyone sees it the same way, but I still feel that whatever is keeping OXB insiders from buying (maybe Serum / maybe not) is also preventing OXB insiders Novo Holdings from doing what they want to do in building their own Thermo Fischer out of Catalent.