It’s a very,very impressive CV.
Back in the 70s and 80s,I felt that the leaders of the major parties and their cohorts were sincere in their views.it mattered not whether I agreed with those views,I believe they had integrity and sincerely believed what they purported to stand for…Wilson,Callaghan,Castle,Heath,Thatcher etc.Now I regard politicians as opportunists for the greater part.They’ll pretty much tell the electorate what they want to hear.They might not subsequently do much about it of course.Quite why anyone would want to be an MP nowadays eludes me especially given the barbarism that can be unleashed on social media. |
If you're not a socialist when you're 18,you haven't got a heart.If you're still a socialist at 30,you haven't got a brain. |
My favourite description of Labour Party policy was made with a short, sharp phrase back in the 70s and they were as correct then as they are today - TO SOAK THE RICH AND DROWN THE POOR! |
Re post 8545, I entirely concur. Middle England (Wales etc) will pay as usual. Enough politics. |
Agreed steeplejack, but why make a bad situation worse. A small (not small) example from todays 'news'.
The Home Office are to accelerate the 'processing of asylum claims' in order to reduce the overspend on their immigration budget. So, they'll quickly make asylum seekers legitimate incomers, and transfer the costs from the immigration budget to both the Benefits costs and the local authority Housing departments.
Madness!!! |
It doesn’t matter whether its Labour,Conservative or Yogi Bear in power.In the 21st Century,Western Governments have been so profligate and created such high levels of debt,that any administration will necessarily resort to high levels of taxation to make ends meet.Europe simply doesn’t have either the raw materials or the growth prospects(even with technology induced productivity gains)to live with such debt levels without increasingly taxing the relatively wealthy.
I’ll shut up now Harry. |
Hopefully the rhetoric is the softening up process so that the actual Budget doesn't seem quite so bad after all.
We (mostly) all know that if you try and squeeze the pips out that tax take doesn't play ball and people change their behaviour, in one shape or form.
The IFS gets cited quite often these days and they are very vocal that you need a broad tax base rather than 'risking' revenue on taxes that people can manage. They highlighted fuel duty as a way of raising a meaningful amount of a broad tax (given it's not been raised since 2011) although that looks less likely given the noise about winter fuel payments.
One thing strikes me that part of the tough talk is to get borrowing costs down. If the Gilt market thinks you will be responsible then yields can fall. That reduces forward costs and also reduces the real losses being banked by the BoE unwinding QE. |
Aye marwalker, that'll cheer us all up. |
Don't know what you all have to worry about after the news of the Oasis reunion next year |
Well, Britain has been going downhill since 1939. Just when we thought we cannot go any lower, along comes Starmer-nomics to finish us off. |
 When we stray into politics it all tends to get a bit tribal so best left. I would never have voted for Starmer because of his history, and some of his government picks reassure me that I was correct to doubt his judgement, but he won in our system and I accept that it is what it is now.
I do worry how it all adds up though. I once heard it explained on the TV that government spend of the last 40 years is traditionally a 3 way split between north sea oil, the city of London and then the tax take outside of that. The only other card they have to play (besides occasionally selling a national asset) is borrowing / printing money - and we all know where that leads.
All parties seem determined to destroy the UK oil industry without ever being too clear on what replaces it. Current government seems keener than most to accelerate the closure and has promised £11.6bn to help other countries do the same. So that will be one income stream lost.
The super rich, where I seem to remember 0.1% of taxpayers pay 16% of the tax take, whilst 1% pay nearly 30% and so on. That top 0.1% is 31,000 people and they are not all going to stay in the UK for a punishment beating because of free healthcare.
Other countries will be lining up to offer them passports. I'm expecting to get fleeced, but we will see. |
Nvidia - a share to follow? |
Almost all my shares down today ygor, including one blue chip.
Straying into politics here but perhaps the fact that the "fully costed" manifesto promised budget (approved by the city / believed by some of the electorate) and the actual "painful" budget promised now in government, is going to cause a bit of instability until we actually find out how painful it is going to be? |
Lots of buying today but the share price is falling. Interesting. |
If you want my shot in the dark taffy, then bearing in mind that was out on the 19th (see post 8512) I'd guess it's an attempt to round up a few more attendees from quite a small potential audience of people who can actually understand it all.
It may of course just be a "speed of OXB" thing too (remembering that ArcticZymes told us that Frank was their new chairman long before OXB bothered). |
Oxford Biomedica to host a free webinar showcasing its AAV expertise |
Thing is Harry, as far as Covid is concerned, you have the gift of 20:20 hindsight, unlike the medics who had to deal with it at the time. I hope, in 3 years time, you can come back here in your DeLorean and tell us what to do about MonkeyPox. |
I'd agree wholeheartedly that the whole of covid was madness, but I'm not really comparing to that period.
If you look at our bioprocessing for Novartis, then I think you could reasonably take a guess at 15% of our total revenue last year.
Yes it's a rough guess (and on the low side I think) but 15% of revenue from a support contract for just one approved drug.
Back in April at the results they told us that is now doubled (with the CAR-T news from March) so now supporting two approved drugs, but the breakdown in April was:-
Pre-clinical through to early-stage clinical 46
Late stage clinical 3
Commercial agreements 2
That was true in April, but of course they have won more work since, and remembering that just supporting a single approved drug seems to be worth something like £14m per year to us, then somewhere down the road there's an awful lot of money here with the drugs which eventually get approved isn't there? Which is why I suspect Novo would rather like to own the whole show by then. |
The market is fickle and there are clear inconsistencies in the rating applied here compared to previous valuations even ignoring the faddish sentiment that surrounded OXB during the Covid period.Hopefully,something might surprise but all things being equal,simply applying normal industry ratios suggests the stock has significant upside.I feel very comfortable holding and waiting. |
The only countering point I would have to that is to remind you of history with OXB and what happened when a gene delivery company which almost nobody outside the industry had heard of got signed up with Novartis to support their CAR-T drug. If you look at the chart for OXB (those peaks in 2015 and 2018) then you can match it up to the Novartis deal progressing.
Remember also that back then OXB is a significantly smaller company with much less in Oxford and of course nothing in France or the USA.
So all that happened on the back of supporting just one CAR-T contract which eventually succeeded and we know there is another commercial CAR-T support contract about to start with a different company. They told us in March, they just haven't told the market what it is yet.
My favourite theory of the moment (I'm sure you've noted) is that something similar happens soon, but this time the people who picked up on the Novartis news last time (whether in the investment community or the industry press), look a little deeper and notice what OXB has built up in the background whilst simultaneously keeping quiet about it.
I think this is where Frank needs to earn his money at the interims and my suspicion is (and this was certainly the case at the interims last year) that he has been saving up news to release as one big hit for maximum impact and coverage.
But we will see. |
Once OXB demonstrates that its CDMO model will prove a reliable profit generator,a rerating will follow.Yet,since OXB is below most fund managers radar and brokers livelihood revolves in dealing in large caps,i don’t expect a damascene experience to propel the stock into the FT250 this year.Next year,i think its probable.The opportunity,but also the frustration,lies in the fact that the market has never found it worthwhile to unearth small company opportunities.That’s why i think that a lot of smaller companies would arguably be better off being private rather than listed,suffering relatively heavy regulation but lightweight research coverage. |
ygor,
I'm sure that yours is the wiser approach, but I'm also sure that there isn't one correct approach - else we would all do it and then there would be no money to be made.
I know that I must have confirmation bias, as it would be pretty much impossible for me not to have it, but I think that as long as I know that I have it and don't try to kid myself that I haven't, then that's half the battle.
There's a similar theme here with my observations (for want of a better word), based upon many years of watching OXB - like malaria (which OXB have never mentioned), why none of the senior staff bought in the last open period (when normally they are supportive), why they seem to be keeping (and recruiting for) Yarnton (which was supposed to be a temporary site to be vacated this year), and many others you may remember - but I'm happy for anyone to take a pick and mix approach with anything on that list.
When OXB was 100% drug discovery, before becoming part drug discovery / part contract gene delivery for others, then being lossmaking didn't really bother me too much because there was always the chance of a mega-pharma hovering with a near billion dollar deal for a product.
With the 100% CDMO company, which I've written many times the 20 year older me prefers the lower risk profile of, then I think it's much more important to make a profit and OXB have guided that for '25 - reiterating it very recently.
For anybody in the market who has no time / interest in my anorak level OXB spotting (I'd guess most of them), there is still some extremely obvious stuff which I expect to be headlined at the interims on the 23rd.
They do seem to be busy (in a constant state of recruitment now) and I've mentioned it seems obvious now that they are extending the lease on Yarnton.
Remember a quick job for us is still the best part of a year and we invoice on delivery, so the £80m which Seb's team sold in the first 7 months of last year is likely all to be invoiced in 2025 at the earliest (on top of what we already had in the sausage machine and what the sales team will sell in the rest of this year).
I'm sure this year will be something around what they have already guided, simply because of the time lag explained re what they can invoice and the fact that they are plainly spending money on increasing capacity. But next year?
They have already said profitmaking, but on what revenue? The way things are going that could soon start to look a lot better than +35% of this year.
If it does end up looking something like £200m (which is far from impossible) then OXB would currently be trading on less than 2x those forward sales. A quick look on Google tells me Avid Biosciences are on 7.6x whilst Lonza are almost bang on the sector average with 5.4x and at the other end of the scale Samsung Biologics is on 16.85x.
I go on a lot (I know) about the many potential wildcards (like what Serum want the bioreactors reserved for) which are genuine game changers in waiting, but much more likely in the remainder of this year now is what happens to this sleepy second line stock when the market wakes up to the fact that next year is profitmaking?
But I've done variations on all of this many times before. It's simply the wait for the interims now, which are quite obviously going to have a bigger than planned spend this year (more staff, etc.) against the first guidance for 2025 which looks at the moment like it's going to be everything we could hope and a little bit more. |
Interesting Harry but remember that you don't always have to be invested in a share to retain an interest in it. My portfolio consists of shares that I know and trust but it doesn't stop me selling them down to a level where the investment represents the profit that I have made on it. That keeps me interested and I can then buy more if I like the look of it from time to time.I bought some more this morning and will insert a stop loss at 280p on the advice of My AI friend! |
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