Meanwhile trades only trickling along. Gone home for Christmas? |
Not that far. I'm sure others do similar but I run a spreadsheet on what I own and my OXB spreadsheet has everything I've previously thought relevant about their partners.
A week tomorrow is the deadline for the EU to decide on Novo buying Catalent and it's expected to be rubberstamped. If so I think that's probably quite relevant for us at the moment and very possibly our most relevant near-team issue. I accept here that the unidentified commercial CAR-T deal is also looming, but I would imagine that is already in our guidance as it was disclosed as previously signed, so might not actually change anything for us significantly when announced in detail.
If the EU approves the Novo Catalent deal a week tomorrow then it's just the FTC to satisfy in the US. There are objections but Catalent is not in great shape at the moment and the Novo money saves them from a predicament which they will be back in if the FTC block Novo. I think the FTC will approve contingent upon some guarantees from Novo and Catalent shareholders have already said a 99% yes please.
Warren is trying to say that Novo will gain an unfair advantage by manufacturing for competitors, but we can argue that many others already do this - i.e. OXB did that when we still had our in-house pipeline. There has to be some trust and professionalism here. Novo also can't find work for 47 plants with their own products so need to keep existing business and grow it.
So if the FTC sees customers reassured, shareholders happy and the Catalent management explaining that this gets them out of a pickle, I think it's a yes from the FTC and at that point we may find out what Novo's plans are to make Catalent's cell and gene therapy division the best it can be. |
Blimey Harry, how deep down the rabbit warren did you go to dig those links out :) |
There are quite a few OXB partners with both seemingly excellent prospects and very battered (aka tempting) share prices. I realise some of this (well quite a bit of it) is down to the disastrous worldwide overreaction to covid, but there's also plainly the issue of too many similar companies chasing the same targets - and this is especially true in CAR-T.
I've mentioned before on here that for various reasons I'm really quite happy with OXB only selling the shovels these days, rather than actually digging for the gold. Out of our c40 partners at the moment, I would guess that a good half of them are working in the current vogue of CAR-T. This isn't a problem for OXB as we will sell our services to them all, but it's unrealistic to assume that all these companies (even if successful in trials) will make it to market and commercial success.
The upside for us is that we really don't need that many of them to do it. We have had one excellent and very lucrative result with Novartis. Another is pending. Something eventually around 5 of these long term commercial support contracts and OXB shareholders will be very pleased - especially when coupled with all our other non CAR-T prospects like CF. Not so great for the shareholders of the partners who don't make it though (which will be the majority because there are a huge number of bios chasing CAR-T, which of course has a finite number of targets & patients).
Non CAR-T I really quite like the look of GeoVax at the moment (another OXB partner and long time battered stock) for a bit of a punt, because those vaccines will be worth a lot of money if it all works out in any one area. Countering this though is my c30 year experience in bios and remembering that whilst they all had really exciting prospects, only a tiny number actually crossed the finishing line.
So, at the moment I'm very pleased with OXB as a service provider to that "whole" industry and (as you will have worked out) I'm also pretty convinced that one of our major shareholders is so sold on the same idea that I think they are about to make it a much bigger business. |
Maybe it has also been tipped somewhere as well,I know it is down 90% odd this year but still has cash in the bank till 2nd half of 2026 and an average analyst average price target of around $25 so buying at $3 today is at least giving traders something to talk about over the thanksgiving table. |
Good find Northstand, but Thanksgiving weekend in the US now, so I wouldn't expect much more info this week. That news reads to me like good progress, but essentially another step towards eventually running a registration trial. As those can take a long time then I'm not sure why it would be worth +25% now - unless of course they were simply oversold on doom and this corrected that. |
Caballeta shares were up 25% last night in after hours trading,am I right in thinking that Caba have a non-exclusive license to use LentiVector ia all 4 of their 'Caba-201' trials?...........
Caballeta Bio Shares Surge The Most In 23 Months In A Single Day As It Unveils Plan To Meet FDA By 2025 For Systemic Sclerosis Drug Trial by Rishabh Mishra November 28, 2024 12:59 AM
'What Happened: The company anticipates meeting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2025 to discuss potential registrational trial designs, as per a statement by DelveInsight Business Research.
The report highlighted that Caballeta showcased positive clinical safety and efficacy data presented at the American College of Rheumatology Convergence 2024. The Systemic Sclerosis drug trial is ongoing with 16 patients with 10 patients dosed as of Nov. 12, 2024.
Why It Matters: The shares rose over the $3 per share mark for the first time on Wednesday in the last two weeks since Nov. 15. Also, the shares rose the most over 24% in a single day for the first time in two years since Dec. 14, 2022.
Cabaletta Bio is dedicated to developing engineered T-cell therapies to offer lasting, potentially curative treatments for autoimmune diseases. Their CABA platform includes both chimeric antigen receptor T cells and their proprietary chimeric autoantibody receptor T cells, designed to target autoimmune conditions.'
'Oxford Biomedica initially licensed its LentiVector® platform to Cabaletta Bio for their lead product candidate, DSG3-CAART. The agreement has now been extended to grant a non-exclusive license to Cabaletta under Oxford Biomedica’s LentiVector® platform IP for their CAR-T programme, CABA-201, a 4-1BB-containing fully human CD19-CAR T cell investigational therapy. Cabaletta Bio has received two IND clearances to date for CABA-201 and plans to initiate a Phase 1/2 clinical trial for patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and lupus nephritis and a separate Phase 1/2 clinical trial for patients with myositis. |
takeiteasy,
There was no news - we had already seen the slides (on OXB's website) and Frank talked through them very nicely.
He said all the things which you would want to hear, lots of work already in for 25 & 26 with 25 already more than 80% booked in. Small loss this year / will be profitable in 25.
Lucy didn't speak.
There was only one question which you would need hearing like Superman to catch, but the way Frank answered the question I'm guessing it was asking if Boston had been a mistake.
Frank's reply was that OXB needed a US facility and that is a good one. That we needed a US plant to be global because most US firms want a US based partner. He said that Homology going out of business and us losing that customer was a setback but that we have made up for it by moving LentiVector to that site. He then added that both France and Boston can now offer LentiVector.
He was very positive, but to be honest I'd expect him to be. If there was anything new there slipped in as an adlib then I missed it. |
Harry, if you can confirm any new news that wpuld be a great help - if any, on the recording |
Phil,
Well found and thanks for the link (which wouldn't let me register - obviously a good judge of character there) but if you just take the middle part of your link
Then it drops you straight in.
Listening now... |
Thanks super - much appreciated |
Frank at Jeffries last week - replay |
It's noise - 'volatile' is the name of the thread, not the poster, and it's only 2 posts, neither worth bothering with imo:
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Now 414p My Bep 788p . A low of 167p in December 23 and again March 2024. Would of been a great buy on those lows . Hope for all my other AIMS
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It’s always hard to find bottom ! How many times did people average down when this was dropping from £15 to £1.60 ish thinking it couldn’t go any lower. I’m back in again with a modest punt and see where it goes. Just think how much those big investors have lost over the last couple of years and they are supposed to know what they are doing… there’s a lot of blind luck… |
Can you copy and paste it Jez? |
Anybody read VOLOTILE's post on LSE a few days ago, very interesting, i never considered our major shareholders to be punting on a attractive risk. But are they. Let's face it, even with Trumps world changing win, we are all stock prisoners 5555 |
For anybody who isn't signed up for the OXB mailed updates, 2 new posters from ESGCT2024 added to the website today:- |
Well said Mr President Sir. The longer this silence goes on, the more the other alternatives fall away, leaving the Novo/Catalent project the most likely. |
I think it's difficult to say anything about trades when one day we have c300k and the next day is 58k shares traded. It's feast and famine for no apparent reason which seems to have been on a rinse and repeat cycle for some time now.
Maybe today was some selling for the Christmas holidays and maybe it wasn't. Unfortunately the free link I had which marked bot trades as algos doesn't work anymore, so your guess is as good as mine.
I do know that once we get into next week the market often goes from slow to nearly dead. Yes things do happen during the first weeks of December, but not very often.
So a head and heart situation I think.
My head tells me that the closer we get to Christmas then people are focussing on other things and putting off / talking about plans for the new year.
My heart tells me that:-
OXB told us about expected FDA approvals in Q4 for some reason. They have told us about winning a commercial CAR-T deal which we still await details of 8 months later. Always possible that something long on the back burner - e.g. some / all of OXB's shelved in-house drug pipeline (including the star there in ProSavin Mk1 / Mk2) might find a new home in some way shape or form. Finally of course the possibility that OXB will form part of Novo's plans for Catalent.
I know I've banged this drum a lot, but look at the insider buying in OXB and look what has been pretty normal every past year
Why has not a single one of them bought during 2024 when this is the last year before we return to profit next year? I strongly suspect it's because they can't - and that when we find out what it is that is keeping them in a closed period (surely only due diligence for that length of time?) then it might be a pretty interesting day. |
Lots of small trades today as people cash in. Patience is required, 2025 is the year when we see real gains (we hope). |
You're effectively saying the same thing icejelly. The investors that matter don't yet know what OXB is, and how to categorise it. |
I don't believe that OXB is held back by its past covid work involvement. More that it is held back by UK and world events and because the company has not proved its future direction. |
Dangerous words here Jez, but at the moment it's difficult to see where they can go badly wrong.
In biotech drug development, then the big risk is that a company will run out of money before any particular experimental drug comes good.
As of almost 12 months ago now, OXB no longer has an in-house experimental drug division. That risk is now taken by our customers. OXB these days performs a service, invoices for that work and moves on. Assuming cost controls are maintained (and why wouldn't they be?) then on a certain percentage of utilisation and upwards, OXB will do increasingly well.
With everything you do in life there will be somebody happy to tell you where you are going wrong, but with the ABL purchase (for example) then the GeoVax work alone seems to suggest that was an excellent addition.
Where things did go wrong (no work in the post covid slump / Homology then going out of business) OXB seem to have righted the ship (our old customers and many more new are back and Boston has non-Homology AAV work growing / is becoming a LV hub).
It's a good story, but as we have mentioned here many times, most in the market see OXB as a covid vaccine stock post-covid.
Novo know it isn't, which leads to my other pet theory of the moment, but exceptional events aside, there's likely a very good chance that OXB have no plans to tell us anything in what remains of 2024 now (effectively 4 weeks). |
Like today and over the past few weeks, the volume is unusually high. As mentioned, lets hope something is brewing. If the 2026 forcast holds firm next year, we should be ok. |
takeiteasy,
I'm guessing and it's nothing more than a theory which seems to me to fit quite well.
Remember the only real news OXB have given us this year has been the upward revision of the guidance for FY25 and then news that we will be making a multiple myeloma CAR-T vector for somebody soon. Odds are that the next OXB news will be more detail on that.
However, in the background here we have OXB's silent running and the possible simple coincidence that no OXB insiders have bought shares since Novo Holdings (the major OXB shareholder) bid for Catalent (huge CDMO which has a 4 / 5 plant C> division).
My guess here is that Novo (who officially are only buying 50 location Catalent to get 3 sites to sell to Nordisk for their weight loss drugs) have a little side plan here to combine OXB with the Catalent C> division. It would roll out OXB's industry leading tech (I realise I'm biased as a holder but it is) into a capacity / capability which would be unaffordable for us near term, but for Novo could potentially give them a lion's share of a market forecast for C> which is huge.
So what are the possibilities?
1) it's a complete coincidence and means nothing.
2) it's related to the Novo Holdings boss saying that they intend to use their windfall from the weight loss drugs to buy up speciality service companies.
3) it's something else.
What are the answers? (aka my guesses)
1) nothing will happen with Novo and we will move into our return to profit in 2025 with a great year for shareholders.
2) Novo will make an offer for OXB (likely a friendly offer to placate IM and Serum) and create the No.1 C> CDMO in the world. With OXB's expertise, Novo's money and Catalent's waiting capacity then that's definitely on the cards there if they want to do it.
3) Could be something other than an offer for all of OXB but still linking the businesses.
We will see in time, but Novo and Catalent both see this as being cleared before the end of the year and if there is a plan involving OXB subject to that approval then what would be the point in waiting? |
Harry, is it directly important to us at OXB that this gets approved and apologies if you have explained this more clearly before but I may have missed it amongst everything else in life atm.... |