SJ, here is my understanding in jest of how the code works in terms of messaging to fellow market traders:
sell 4 shares - "Can I borrow more stock to sell running low on OXB shares"
sell 3 shares - "Sorry mate we are running low on stock to sell at this price point too"
sell 2 shares = " That's me done then if I cannot borrow stock - all out"
sell 1 share - "We are all out too"
Let's see if my guess was right :) |
I'm more inclined to think those small,1 share,2 share trades etc are some sort of esoteric code between marketmakers but that might be trying to offer an explanation for the inexplicable. |
Not one to grumble but another trade of 1 share just now..we had a load of these trades this week of 1,2,3 or 4 shares - someone trading here must be very bored and prefer this to the crossword puzzles :) |
Not sure what 9374 has to do with anything marwalker |
Which spoke is that ?Directors can't buy for the last six months or more because of a big secret deal or too close to Christmas etc etc |
Adds another spoke to Mr. President's wheel... |
It does feel very like that scenario. |
Yes there appears a cap on the spYou could say that an entity is selling into any strengthAlternatively a cap on the share price would also serve a potential suitor to make their offer more attractiveI remember an ad on US financial channel a bank offering to act on your behalf and keep your strategy under wrapsPays your money etc |
They knocked it down under 4.30 again then. |
Finally, I found a " link" between OXB and SCLP.For the few of us that have both.Not sure what Alexander likes, but... HTTps://www.linkedin.com/posts/wgpartnersllp_wg-partners-are-pleased-to-have-acted-as-activity-7272206644132941824-Ac2z?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android |
Sheer efforts being expended for weeks now with loading the order book with small sales at and around 4.31 to keep the price locked below 4.30 is quite astonishing imvho - do these traders not have better things to waste their time on like looking for their Christmas presents :) |
 Time will tell - both with the takeover hypothesis and the price, but I'm inclined to the idea of the former mainly because the boss of Novo Holdings had previously indicated a plan to buy up companies like OXB.
Re the share price, then there's no point arguing what the market thinks it is worth at the moment. Myself though, I think a much more important figure is what the majority of our major shareholders think OXB is worth.
The market is simply looking at sales and profits, but some of OXB's IP and knowhow is incredibly valuable and not in the price.
At the moment the market price isn't representative (for various reasons we talk about a lot) but if the Novartis work alone is worth £25m per year to us (and I think it is about that) then just that should be worth about £1.30 / £1.40 per share - and wasn't it Novartis + 36 more customers we had at the last count? OK the others are not as large, but even so?
I also think you have to be careful about the price of the shares which OXB were willing to place for IM as IM had previously sold us something quite valuable for a very low valuation and accepted full payment in shares at twice the market price. So that final placing was a fair deal for them and hasn't been offered to anyone else.
I've listed the shareholdings before, but the top 3 own 30% and the top 13 something like 70%. A lot of them have held for a very long time and they know what OXB is worth. Unless they are distressed then how would an opportunistic bid work? |
Well you might be right but who would of thought back in the heady days when the price was mid teens that Institut-Merieux would buy a stake at prices well south of a fiver.Whether one likes it not,any potential bidder will lend some credence to how OXB has been valued by the market hence you get the well worn comment 'the offer represents a premium to the average share price etc of x per cent'.Anyway,que sera sera,its speculation as to whether a bid will emerge at all. |
I really can’t see £7-9 being anything close to a successful bid. |
For information, I sold 200 shares at 13:47pm shown as a buy, trade number 132. In the first 10 minutes after 14:30pm another 50 trades conducted. Not hugh trades but US interest? |
from 3 mins
But Galapagos says short vein-to-vein time is key for localised manufacturing, which crucially doesn't involve cell freezing. |
Aside from the obvious you mean?
IM merged ABL Europe into OXB to get a part of future business which they couldn't compete for alone via a shareholding in OXB which they took as full payment.
Amazing deal for OXB but driven by what OXB had and what ABL didn't have. As Seb explained, they would never have been able to catch up with the vector tech on their own and when the analyst asked "so it was a case of if you can't beat them join them?" he replied yes.
Would they have imagined OXB then being bought out? Well it must have been considered as a risk.
If it's enough money to compensate them for selling those expected future OXB profits now then I would imagine they would be ok with it. If not then what are they going to do? It's a risk we all take.
If there is no bid coming then I would expect them to be very pleased with c£180m in sales next year and a profit (as will I).
Something is going on and your guess is as good as mine. OXB went quiet 6 months before the ABL deal was announced and no insiders bought shares between the full year results and that deal announcement (following which a lot of them immediately bought shares).
Nobody could have guessed that deal was on from what was in the public domain before it happened. Investment detectives might have spotted that Seb was an adviser to IM, but how would you guess more beforehand?
Today is a bit different as there seem to be a lot of clues out there indicating that Novo could make good use of OXB's skillset in their newly acquired C> arm of Catalent.
Is it true or is it just coincidence?
As I wrote the other day, if there is something in this then following FTC approval there is no point in Novo waiting. They have just spent 16.5bn on something which they will want to see come good.
Next step is waiting to see what the FTC say. |
what is in it for IM in any of all this - what are they gaining now and in the future Harry... |
Cousin,
Just to bat one back over the net here (no offence intended so please don't take any)...
OXB have 13 shareholders who between them hold c70%.
3 of them hold 30%. 2 of them are imho the only realistic likely buyers for OXB.
It's been explained in the past that this was the main reason why the PE guys never tried a smash and grab, which did seem to be on the cards when OXB exited the pandemic with £85m (or whatever it was) in cash (plus assets like the buildings).
In the time since then OXB have sold their buildings and slashed the in-house drug programme, which sort of ended any possibility of the PE model even being entertained.
But we're still back with the awkward maths here, of how do you get the shares without the price going through the roof - remembering that if it doesn't go down well that at 50% it means paying the highest price paid to everybody else?
I think if an opportunistic bid was ever on then it would have happened in the past and these days the landscape is all wrong.
I can think of many ways to put forward a friendly offer, but the easy way is a number where on D-Day the OXB board vote and then Roch makes 12 telephone calls to explain the offer and that the board will / will not be recommending it to the shareholders.
If it's not a good offer and Vulpes, Serum, IM and Mr Shah all say no, then that's 20% of the shares off the table before we even know about it.
Would knowledge of a future bid conditional on approvals force Frank to put the company into a closed period where insiders couldn't take advantage of that? I would say absolutely - even if some of those senior staff don't know why they are in a closed period.
Conversely, with Serum (for example) the MSA is signed and in place and we already know that should they trigger it with a guaranteed minimum amount of work then they have rights to jump the queue on a large bioreactor for 10 years. Would Serum's dealings with their masters stop OXB insiders buying in the open periods which follow the kitchen sink of each results presentation? I honestly think not.
Similarly the commercial CAR-T deal which is announced but not announced. We know that can only be 2 possible companies with 1 being the odds on favourite and it's a manufacturing job for their vector. Good work and nice to have, but not outside of what could be expected as the ordinary business of a global CDMO.
That's what makes me think this is bigger than just some more work coming our way.
We will see. |
Hostile bids in the pharmaceutical industry are pretty rare,afterall the primary assets go up and down in the lift and it would be counterproductive to upset them.However,opportunistic bids(as undertaken in recent years by the likes of Takeda) are very common and it would be sound business sense if an interested party moved to acquire OXB in the near future as it moves towards profitability.Corporate advisers won't be remotely interested in how the OXB price fared in the past,there will be a straightforward analysis using peer comparison and investment ratios to estimate a fair bid price now.OXB willing,a bid around £7-£9 could probably win the day currently.I do feel that if OXB management considered their stock rating an overriding priority,they would have sought a US listing some time ago like some other UK industry players. |
I have to say that the impression I took from the AGM was that there was a feeling of potential vulnerability to an opportunistic bid.
Would an indicative bid have prevented insiders from buying pretty much all of 2024? Personally I can't see that. Maybe a month or two but not for such a prolonged period.
A bid is probably the likely end game for OXB, as so many small/mid UK quoted companies do ultimately succumb.
My best guess at the lack of insider buying is a large potential contract. There was mention in the results regarding contracts that were complex but potentially valuable being assigned a low probability in the pipeline value. Maybe something could be close but hasn't managed to get over the line? (but hasn't fallen away either). |
It's not a case of what we or OXB managers want, more the best of a situation which might drop upon us soon. Important to remember that OXB is a small cap stock (formally a mid cap stock), whilst the names we mention currently regarding this possibility are mega-cap. They will win.
If (and I'm just making up numbers here for the sake of an argument) Novo see OXB as an instrumental part of the plan in making their 16.5bn starter investment in Catalent (currently No3) a serious rival to Lonza (No1) and Thermo Fisher (No2), then they may have already said to OXB "If Catalent gets approved then we are going to bid 10x sales for OXB".
So if there is currently that conditional offer somewhere in the background based upon a multiple of sales, the actual share price at any point in time is a bit irrelevant and Frank's job (to do the best for the shareholders) is to wait and take it.
To the best of my knowledge the only time a CEO would try to talk the price up is to fight off a bid which he or she sees as too cheap, but if the bid is a good one then the CEO is pretty much compelled to recommend it to shareholders. If a bidder offers 10x sales and the sector average for your company is something like 5x sales, then they have made a very good offer haven't they?
Just to repeat I have no evidence for this other than a feeling and I made up the 10x number to make the point of an argument. |
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