I simply go off the sector average for CDMO market caps being a little over 5x sales, with the top end of the range being those in profit and those in the higher tech like Samsung (i.e. not generic pill bashers).
OXB have indicated that sales next year will be somewhere around £180m.
If the market valued us as highly as Samsung Bio (15.77x sales) we would be almost exactly £27 per share.
That's not to say I expect that, but it's something to bear in mind when dismissing £10 as fantasy.
At the moment I'm more inclined to wonder what the premium is that Novo would be prepared to offer, in the full knowledge that as OXB moves into profit then the longer they delay the more it is going to cost. |
I would suggest that a twelve month target of 550p is realistic,a target of somewhere between £6-£7-50 perhaps optimistic and something approaching ten pounds is fanciful.However,remember that some of the high range price targets haven’t been plucked out of thin air,they’re generally predicated on tried and tested analytical ratios.On a price to sales ratio ,OXB is undervalued compared to many of its peers.My target, for what it’s worth, before I would top slice any stock would be 750p but I tend to agree with Harry that ultimately like most good UK companies,OXB is more than likely to be acquired. |
It's very difficult to second guess these things on information available to us Gareth, but I do know that OXB spend quite a bit of time & effort on their sales pitch to much larger investors than us. Could easily be someone from the Jefferies conference who liked what they heard and have been buying a few since. Could easily be many other things too.
Separately, I become more convinced by the day that Novo have made a top level decision to use some of their enormous cash pile to build a manufacturing empire which will rival Lonza, Samsung and such.
If you think about it then currently Novo have a huge number of eggs in diabetes and weight loss (which are very closely related). If they want to do something strategic by way of future insurance (i.e. mitigate against being a Kodak with their eggs in the camera film basket) then building an empire of being a very technical service provider to others is quite a good idea.
You know my thoughts on how they can get a running start to be the leading C> CDMO. |
A lot of trades at 425p including 215K “sel”. Volume does appear to have picked up this week with a couple of new broker notes (neutral not particularly informative from JPM). Could something be stirring? Interesting to see what happens when NYSE opens. May be nothing! Time reveals all! |
It's an interesting prediction there Jez.
Unless you are expecting some kind of as yet unforeseen disaster here, I'm not sure why you would think that a record revenue year by something around £40m over this year plus a profit would only be worth another quid.
That said, how many times did we have to suffer Peter the badger and his handbag carrier luminaire tell us that OXB were going bust? And get voted up for it... |
You will upset HST with your projection. However I would say that is a much more realistic twelve month target. Peoples expectations round here have been totally unrealistically raised. |
Well, looking at the volume today, i guess London is celebrating Christmas early. My prediction for 1 year from today is £ 5.50. If it comes to pass, i would be more than happy. |
Who puts a fairy at the top of their Christmas tree? |
2 days to the deadline for the EU anti-trust decision on Novo Catalent.
Meanwhile Novo on a charm offensive with Catalent's existing US customers, offering them contract extensions by way of reassurance.
The US FTC decision is supposed to be before the end of the year.
Catalent seem very happy to be taken over and have their recent wobbles rendered irrelevant by Novo's very deep pockets.
Catalent's shareholders 99% in favour rather than the other option of Catalent staying single.
Novo is reassuring Catalent's customers.
US stock market seems to think that the deal will go through at the offered price, which to me is a reminder of the bookies all knowing Trump would win whilst the world's press were busy thinking up reasons of why he wouldn't.
Personally (usual wealth warnings here / amateur forecasting alert) I think the deal will pass both regulators without issue.
Shortly after that Novo Holdings will sell 3 factories to Novo Nordisk and become owner managers of the rest (a very large global CDMO which needs a boost).
If that happens then we soon (relative term) will find out if there is a connection between Novo Holdings owning 12% of OXB and not a single OXB insider buying shares since Novo Holdings bid for Catalent.
As mentioned previously many times, there's perhaps a healthy dose here of me connecting random events which look connected but are just circumstantial.
However, it does make sense to me that if Novo Holdings are looking to make Catalent a core asset (and they are) then they can't just leave it as is. There must be a plan (which is always easier to come up with when sat on a cash mountain).
The Novo Holdings non-exec director on our board will know much better than us what OXB can do. But he will also know that for OXB to grow (even at better than 35%) will take years because that's how long it takes to fund and kit out new facilities.
Money isn't an issue for NH (unless having too much of it is a problem) but in weeks they are likely to own 4 cell & gene therapy factories and a blank canvas of the brand new and empty former UK government Vaccine Manufacturing & Innovation Centre (VMIC) in Oxford, on OXB's doorstep.
I couldn't give you the odds here of this coming true, but if following Catalent approval Novo Holdings bid for the 88% of OXB which they don't own, then something which would have taken OXB 20 years or longer, can be done very quickly.
Novo could roll out OXB's tech / knowhow and experience into the existing 4 Catalent C> factories, whilst OXB get a 6th site at Oxford to expand into.
OXB shareholders get paid off on acceptable terms which Frank will recommend. In exchange for that money Novo Holdings quickly own the biggest / best C> CDMO.
Stranger things have happened at Christmas. |
The number of London-listed companies leaving the stock exchange due to takeovers is at the highest point in over a decade.
A total of 45 companies have de-listed so far this year, the highest since 2010, according to figures from Bloomberg.
Major deals include the sale of video game company Keywords Studios to private equity firm EQT, cybersecurity business Darktrace to Thoma Bravo, and Virgin Money, sold to Nationwide.
A further string of sales are expected to be completed in the coming months, such as the Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s takeover of Royal Mail owner IDS and Carlsberg’s purchase of Britvic.
It comes amid concerns that the London Stock Exchange is no longer attractive to major companies. Revolut’s chief executive Nikolay Storonsky said earlier this week that listing in London is “not rational”.
He told the 20VC podcast: “If you look at trading in the UK, you always pay a stamp duty tax, which is 0.5pc. I just don’t understand how the product which is being provided by the UK can compete with the product provided by the US.
Daily Telegraph 4th Dec |
After all the efforts expended yesterday in another memorable "fakeout" on the chart, troops are retiring to regather their strength for another assault (after Christmas?)...so barely a trade out there atm :) |
"News, news, news" would probably be more useful though Dom. |
Remember The Donald says "fight, fight, fight!". |
Defence at £4.30 battling heroically to hold the line firm - no Dad's army here but the real troops :) |
The way I had it explained to me is that JPM are an OXB broker purely so we get invited to "the" biggest investor healthcare conference of the year. Pay JPM to be your broker and you get an invite, but a small cap bio is not really a stock that JPM would cover in depth, so you get what you get which is basically this.
Novo boomed massively on being the first to market with the GLP-1 weight loss drug in that biggest market. I think their up and down since is to do with people trying to work out what the real price is rather than anything post-covid related. |
P75/DC, keep the small punters out....make it all look so dull and boring and when we are at deemed "suitable" price flex to uber bullish in the broker reports, we all buy in when they sell out....is that not how it goes small punters buy high and sell low? |
Nice jump. Big trade? |
Lack of the means to do their diligent research? |
I just don’t get why the brokers are being so pessimistic for share price targets. |
If so GJ, perhaps move on and find a different broker.... |
Is that an update from today. If so and if JPMC (joint corporate broker) then a "neutral" recommendation is a poor update. |
Harry, the Novo share price has been some surprise recently to fall from 1.40 to 1.00 and now back up a little. You have to say at some point this is all look very over sold and due a recovery bounce across the sector. I see the EWI trust is moving ahead quite a bit now which supports the view that parts of the small cap bio is drawing some interest too. Traders are happy to take quite a decent number of shares for only a small discount to the bid, so there are buyers here atm even though the market looks so thin.... |
SMALL CAP
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JPMorgan raises Oxford BioMedica price target to 490 (450) pence - 'neutral' |