Oovarvo - (vic reeves) |
Excelcia!? |
At least it's not Consignia... |
They are recognised through the industry as OXB, so makes sense to me. They obviously don’t think the Oxford name adds any prestige within biotech. ‘Oxford’ probably seems stuffy, old fashioned and ‘anti-agile217; to the Americans so probably makes sense. We are on a global footprint now, not just UK business. |
Strange rebranding? Dropping "Oxford" and "Biomedica" for it's ticker symbol? If you wanted to rebrand wouldn't you go all out for a more imaginative name? |
Massive news OXB to be rebranded as .....OXB Oxford Biomedica PLC - Oxford Biomedica rebrands as OXB #OXB @OxfordBioMedic HTTps://www.voxmarkets.co.uk/rns/announcement/fb9007be-a7ed-43e6-8720-896f246c7ded #voxmarkets |
P - I really don't know - I do wish Beam would make it clearer. I have a selection of papers to read :¬( but it will have to wait for tomorrow or later. At the moment I'm wondering whether electroporation is used to prepare the package, and the lentivirus to deliver it to the patient.
It's fabulous science though - I started on this: this morning - hard work, but fascinating stuff. I wonder where it will all lead... |
Congratulations Harry. You probably haven't noticed but on every day that since you've been opening your Advent Calendar buy volume has exceeded sales. We need you on the Board as a non exec! |
supernumerary, I think you have sorted it out - It is a 2 stage process. T cells are base-edited with various things to make them invisible to the host (to make them allogenic), then transduced with a lentiviral vector to add the anti-CD7 CAR. |
Page 121 of this presentation for example: But later on P18 mentions a Lentiviral CAR, so I think there may be a step in the process I don't understand. To put it mildly :¬) |
Plutonian - I was going by this, and several other pages on the Beam website: - under BEAM-201: 'Delivery modality: Electroporation | Ex vivo'
Maybe they changed at some time in the development? I seem to remember that Maxcyte also quotes them as an electroporation customer. |
Harry, I greatly enjoy your Advent calendar countdown and look forward to each window opening. I am sure you will reap your rewards in the fullness of time. |
Plutonian you old tease - you're not supposed to do this unless I shine the giant "P" in the sky!
(thank you though) |
 Afternoon Super,
Doubtless you've seen my many warnings that I'm no scientist / doctor, but 201 is their only CAR-T. The rest of BEAM's pipeline seems to be very different from what we do.
That AI thing which is the top of any search these days was what I put into my post ("BEAM-201 is produced by base editing T cells from healthy donors at four genomic loci, and then transducing them with a lentivirus. The resulting cells are allogeneic, meaning they are universally compatible.") but I did spend some time looking at this link and pondering what it was all about.
Either search on "lentiviral" or scroll about halfway through it and you end up on a slide entitled "Allogenic multiplex edited CAR-T cell process". Look at the sequence and it says:-
Editor mRNA
gRNA #1
gRNA #2
gRNA #3
gRNA #4
Lentiviral CAR
Quite how that happens is beyond me, but tbh I don't really think it's important.
I put BEAM in the countdown (I have a lot of choices) partly because of Ygor asking about next-gen future proofing with OXB, but my honest opinion is that Novo will own OXB long before BEAM get that before the review committee for approval. |
supernumerary, with the greatest of respect, here is the correction you seek. Direct from the horses mouth...
"BEAM-201 is produced using a GMP-compliant, clinical-scale process in which T cells derived from healthy donors are simultaneously base edited at four genomic loci then transduced with a lentivirus coding for an anti-CD7 CAR"
hxxps://investors.beamtx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/beam-therapeutics-names-first-car-t-base-editing-development |
Harry - re yesterdays calendar entry, small point. I'm not convinced that Beam use viral vectors of any sort for BEAM-201 - they say they transfect the cells using electroporation (Maxcyte technology) rather than viral transduction. So I assume that oxb is providing bioreactor services for other stages of the process, and probably a lot of guidance too.
Correct me if I'm wrong! |
OK, the interim results working days countdown...
4 days to go - Kyverna Therapeutics.
OXB say very little about Kyverna. If you use the search facility on the OXB website you will find nothing. All OXB have ever said is a brief passage tucked away in the 2022 interims text to say that we signed them up sometime after 30th June 2022 to provide vectors / support for their CAR-T work.
This OXB link may or may not refer
This 3rd party link definitely refers
Why have I picked Kyverna for the number 4 spot? Their September presentation (just out)
It's brilliant and I would encourage anyone to read it, but selected points to note:-
Slide 19 - against Manufacturing and supply chain partnerships - "Oxford Biomedica supply agreement, enabling use of LentiVector"
Slide 4 - 8.3 million potential patients
Slide 6 - Zero serious reactions / complication in the clinical trials on the first 30 patients so far
Slide 9 - Note the Fast Track route to approval awards and the RMAT (regenerative medicine advanced therapy) designation (allows for accelerated approval based surrogate or intermediate endpoints).
Following slides show trial successes so far including a feature on a lady who is now fixed.
What more can we ask? |
Xoptimist,
Avid have more than 200m debt and little cash while the reverse is true for OXB. The revenue guide you cite for Avid is for FY25 whereas for OXB FY24. Taken together on an EV/fwd sales basis the valuation gap is significantly greater than what you've estimated. That is of course before even discussing other quantitative and qualitative differences. |
Well spotted Phil.
To me that all lines up with our past observations here (circumstantial evidence that they appear to have extended the "stopgap" Yarnton lease and the pretty much constant high volume recruitment), followed of course by the recent OXB RNS which included the line "With increasing demand for services, OXB to invest in talent to support future growth".
In less words they are a lot busier than they expected to be at this point and they needed to split that role which is now too much work for one.
I would say it's a very good sign. |
Xoptimist,
We can agree to disagree and I'm fine with that, but I'm in the same camp as Seb (and long before him JD who said much the same thing) in that looking around there is only really OXB which does what OXB does. Most of the people eyeing up and moving in on the business opportunity are fermenters, small molecule bashers or similar who fancy a piece of the CGT action.
I think I'm correct in saying that Avid decided to expand into viral vectors in 2021 and opened some suites in 2022?
That's great, but if true it's no time at all in this business and they will still be learning.
OXB spent 25 years perfecting their 4th generation lentiviral vector which is acknowledged as a world leader and offered to all our clients. Where is the Avid equivalent? From what I can see on their website they offer to grow on most popular vectors for customers but offer none of their own.
Unless they take a leaf out of OXB's book and spend a small fortune buying a good / proven AAV or similar (and then make it better using OXB tech which they likely don't have) then how are they going to catch up?
Remember Seb (who works for OXB but also advises IM) explaining why IM sold us ABL for so little? Because they had no vectors of their own, realised that developing their own would take too long / cost too much and finally (after accepting they would probably never catch up) decided to pay in kind to become part of the world leader in a "if you can't beat them, join them" move.
Avid's new viral vector facility is 53,000 sq ft
OXB have 183,000 sq ft in Oxford, 96,000 sq ft in Boston and 123,000 sq ft in France.
If Avid really are our nearest competitor then that should make us all feel an awful lot better about holding OXB. My guess would be Samsung are closer with their CGT division, but of course they trade on an enormous sales multiple. |
Hey Harry
I think we all fundamentally believe that OXB is undervalued by the current market and the share price continues to be weighed down by its past and the lack of any news.
I do however think we might need to retool our ideas around valuation multiples a little.
I think we all believe there are very few exact apples to apples industry comparables to OXB and in some way OXB is a unique company.
We have however often been told that the most clear comparable for OXB is Avid Biosciences of the US.
That’s a CDMO company which has a current forward revenue guidance for FY25 (year ending April 30th 2025) of $160-168m (mid point of $164m) – which serendipitously is exactly what OXB is guiding with our mid point of £130m. At today share price of around $11.20 and with 63.8m shares in issue that gives Avid a market cap of about $715m or GBP568m. The multiple to forward sales is 4.35 compared to our 2.83 multiple based on OXB market cap of GBP368m and forward guided sales this year of £130m.
Avid has three things going for it we don’t. Its profitable; it doesn’t have the kind of challenging back story we had in 2022 and 2023; and its U.S. listed.
So the extent to which it is a good comparable for OXB one would think that we should have a similar multiple of sales once we are profitable and have further buried our recent past in the rear view mirror. So lets say a 4-4.5 times multiple at the end of next year when hopefully based on Frank’s forward guidance we have booked £175m of revenue and have turned a profit – so a market cap of £175m x 4.5 = £787m or £7.50 per share. That would be a more than doubling of the share price over the next 15 months.
And then in 2026/2027 we will need to get to more traditional valuation metrics – multiples of earnings.
So what is the right valuation today? Until we are profitable and palpably out of the woods it makes sense to me that the market has a valuation discount. As investors get more confident about management’s forward guidance – which hopefully will be what happens next week – then the market will start closing the valuation and multiple gap.
Within the next 6 months what makes sense to me is that we get to, say, at least 3.5 times sales. So, we should be looking by the end of April at a market cap of around £612m. This would mean a 66% increase in the share price from where we are today - in seven months. That would be a handsome return without any need for a frothy valuation or multiple.
Fingers crossed there is no backsliding by management on forward guidance next Monday and if we are lucky, as you have suggested, Frank finally puts some flesh on the bone of our multiple myeloma deal or releases some other major news. And if its really good news then maybe we get to 3.5 times sales sooner than I currently anticipate.
Once again for me, assuming everything remains as guided, its just a matter of patience before the market plays catch up. |
Change in people page.
Thierry now COO only
Mark Caswell moved from US to UK site head
New US site head: John Maravich joined Oxford Biomedica as the VP of operations at the Bedford site in November 2023 and became Site Head of US Operations in September 2024. |
I think you are correct Sean.
I also think Frank learnt a lesson last year (after coming from years at a private company) that you can't just change full year guidance on interims day and think it will all be fine. Hence him telling us mostly what we already knew again on the 8th of last month, which would really be to reassure the market that the full year guidance for this year and the forecast of profitability next year is still on track or better.
There are several things looming with OXB now which are gamechangers. We know some as shareholders but there will be others we don't know about. The great thing of course about multiple eggs in multiple baskets is that we have very good odds of landing multiple deals, and of course we "know" we have a second commercial CAR-T deal already (they told us in March). They just haven't given any detail - which would be my guess for Frank's "big reveal" at the interims presentation, but we will see.
Regardless of if the market follows OXB's detail or not (likely not) the headline figures will be big news and for OXB the multiples are currently all wrong.
If you say £130m revenue for this year, then the market cap should be around £650m and yet we are £365m.
Frank has promised better than +35% for next year, so £175m sales would be a market cap nudging a billion on very average sector ratings.
If the new CAR-T deal (announced but still secret) is anything like what it should be, then OXB will be back in the FTSE250 at the last review of the year. |
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