Oxford Biomedica Share Discussion Threads

[takeiteasy] 15/2/2024 11:18

totally agree on your last point - we should get this shortly now..

[harry s truman] 15/2/2024 10:35

takeiteasy,

It was me who said that (listen to the PH guy in the interims webcast and he's obviously a tad deflated that his house broker forecast and what they announced were a bit apart).

If you want my guess of the day then I'd say that this news is nothing bad about anybody and it's simply to do with conferences.

We know that JPM are our joint broker because it gets us invited to the biggest and most prestigious health conference for investors every year.

RBC also do a health conference "RBC's Pharmaceutical CDMO & Bioprocessing Conference" in which we were given a presenting slot last year and our chiefs were interviewed in a fireside chat. This likely has much more to do with today's broker change than anything regarding PH.

As far as I'm aware, PH are a small/midcap firm who specialise in what they did for us when they raised money by placing shares for the Homology deal.

That is done now and I'm sure everything is amicable, it's just that JPM and RBC can do more for us regarding access to bio investors with money than PH could.

I think this maybe explains the delay (in the 2024 updated guidance) and would expect RBC to lead that out now.

[takeiteasy] 15/2/2024 10:16

New broker hopefully has a client based interested in a FTSE small cap biotech stock to sell a few to ?

[steeplejack] 15/2/2024 09:22

I think it unlikely that OXB would abandon a UK listing.It is irritating if companies do that, because you're effectively obliged to close out your position.I see that OXB reported trades in the first hour of trading amounted to around £860.Not really bathing in the limelight :)

[marwalker] 15/2/2024 09:01

Sore point with me. My CAT holding forced sold out at a low price only to find their lead arthritis drug was making Abbot a billion dollars a year or two laterYou May remember all those small American oil exploration cos floated in LondonMany a shirt was lost with all those dry wellsLet's hope Homology turns out to be a shrewd deal

[steeplejack] 15/2/2024 08:27

Cambridge Antibody Technology gave up a UK quote and listed exclusively on Nasdaq some years back.(It subsequently got taken over).All the major UK drug companies such as AstraZen and Glaxo have highly active ADR listings of course so it wouldn't be any surprise to see OXB pursue a US listing if it thought beneficial.The daily activity in OXB is very low.Appointing an additional new broker indicates that the company is at least aware of a need to improve communication with investors.

[ch1ck] 15/2/2024 08:15

Does a listing in the US make sense, not to me but a buyout does.Rolling in US cash, could this be heading our way

[takeiteasy] 15/2/2024 07:51

Did someone here earlier say that the Peel chap had expressed some "surprise" at the earnings call over the outcomes diverging from his estimates - perhaps there was a falling out

[gareth jones] 15/2/2024 07:14

Interesting appointment of new corporate broker, RBC Capital Markets to work alongside JPMC. RBC are a Canadian company with a long history of working in North American securities. RBC also have a Worldwide brokerage presence. I assume Peel Hunt have been relieved of their duties? Let's hope we see some value for our buck from RBC or is it a precursor to something bigger?

[harry s truman] 14/2/2024 19:32

Brucie,

That sounds fine to me.

You know both my thoughts and my hopes already, in that on traditional CDMO multiples then OXB should be valued at 5.5x sales (market cap) as a minimum, and really as 100% CGT a higher multiple still.

But this isn't a normal market and a lot of people out there still think that OXB will continue to burn cash this year and need to raise more.

I'm hopeful that once the case against that is clearly made (with Stuart telling us the percentage already booked in of work which we can actually take this year) then the market will wake up, but I don't expect that to happen overnight.

£90m in sales last year + 30% growth + £13m sales which ABL came with would be £130m sales for 2024 forecast (and to be honest I'd be disappointed if it isn't actually better than that).

£130m x 5.5 = £715m and the market cap at close today was £170m.

As the economy is terrible and there were record withdrawals from many trusts last year, I can't say anything with great confidence other than I expect the price this year to settle somewhere between those two numbers.

At the moment something like £565m would get us back into the FT250 and if they manage that this year I will take that as a very good step back in the right direction. They have every chance, but we will see.

[harry s truman] 14/2/2024 19:16

I don't think so today Dom.

Seems like a low volume day today (72,940 shares) and 47,456 of that was the uncrossing trade in the closing auction.

My shot in the dark at trade analysis here (aka wild guess) is that there are a lot of people sat on their hands now waiting for the promised 2024 updated guidance.

We all know roughly what 2023 was (as OXB have told us), but a little bit like the 2021 excellent results presented in April 2022, nobody really cares about what is done - they are far more interested in what is to come. I'm obviously hoping that the reverse will apply here, in that whilst 2023 was far from excellent, 2024 onwards is guided as much better.

[dominiccummings] 14/2/2024 16:33

3%+ jump between 2 prices at close. I guess one of them is an earlier trade?

[brucie5] 14/2/2024 12:35

Harry - the current markets make me nervous; so yes, I'm inclined to the 'safety' of yield over story, even in a situation so well covered by yourself. I do sense that this is bottom, or near as; but then I bought at £4 thinking the same, and fortunately took a stop loss when it looked like failing.
That aside, of course I advise no-one to follow my example! I continue to see bright futures for CWR and OXB along with several other's seemingly/ utterly overlooked by current markets.

[harry s truman] 14/2/2024 11:20

You must have a hair trigger on your stops Brucie (I'm not having a dig as something similar would have saved me a small fortune) but the charges must add up when you are in and out a lot?

Remember we are only a fortnight since OXB issued a release saying that everything they listed in the 7th December business update has either been achieved as stated or is still on track.

I'll repeat what I've written a few times now, this is actually a very open OXB by historic standards.

There will be the 2024 guidance update soon.

[brucie5] 14/2/2024 09:39

Temporarily out of both Oxb and Cwr. But continue to read your coverage with interest.

[steeplejack] 14/2/2024 09:06

In the past,OXB would indeed have been prompted to clarify the trading situation as a result of the enduring weakness in the share price.In the good old days,companies had a broker(perhaps two)who enjoyed a real element of exclusivity in their relationship with the company listed.The same broker would handle rights issues etc and provide a meaningful interface between company and investors.If a share price fell or rose sharply,an institutional shareholder was more than likely to ring the appointed broker to the company and enquire as whether there was good reason.The corporate department would ring the company concerned and ask whether something was going on that would best be imparted to investors.Of course,there are rules applied by the Stock Exchange nowadays that apply when shares move sharply one way or the other but i don't believe that the share price smoothing mechanism of yesteryear exists anymore.(This is primarily due to insider concerns i imagine).

[dominiccummings] 14/2/2024 08:39

In the 'old days' companies used to issue " no known reason" etc.

[harry s truman] 14/2/2024 00:00

It could also simply mean that the priorities are the way they are because they are very busy.

Yes I'm making excuses for them, but what are the chances that ABL use the same systems as OXB? OK they might, but when Stuart said it was just a matter of changing the name on the signs, document headers and such - I think we all know it's a bit more than that.

The thing in our favour here, and I realise it's a blindingly obvious thing to say, is that Frank and Seb are native speakers of that language - which makes everything they have to do as easy as it can possibly be.

Regarding IM eventually owning OXB, this is one of these things where I can see both arguments as plausible, but if you look at other IM group companies like BioMérieux where they own 59%, Mérieux NutriSciences where they own 70% or Transgene where they own 55%, then yes those are controlling holdings, but what would happen to our price if they tried for 55% of OXB?

I'm not going to have a go at explaining the practicalities of that to you as you obviously already know, but how many shares are actually available at 170p? What happens when they have taken those out of the market and so on?

What happens when all the wise guys (who were selling short when they realised there were forced trust sellers last year) realise what IM are up to and decide that going long is the thing to be doing? At what point do IM abandon the idea and stick with their large but not controlling holding?

I realise they are billionaires, but that doesn't mean they have limitless pots of it just hanging about.

We're all waiting for OXB to issue updated guidance for 2024. If that guidance is what we hope it to be (confirmed breakeven this year or maybe even small profit, but certainly end of the post-covid cashburn) then who is going to sell IM their shares at a price which is assuming another big loss and need for future fundraising?

Anyway, we will see.

[steeplejack] 13/2/2024 21:59

All it tells you Harry,is that communicating with the City is not top of the list of their priorities.That is why i think that this company will be in IM private fold in "due course".

[harry s truman] 13/2/2024 21:35

At least they have put something on the website now (the lady who was previously ABL manager now shown as site head on OXB's website) but I think it's not that great that 5 months since this began and over 2 months since they signed, they didn't have a parallel website ready to switchover to on completion which included ABL (who still seem to be running their own website - including the US plant which isn't ours).

Maybe it's a sign that they have started? (the website update).

[takeiteasy] 13/2/2024 21:15

Woody, have to say I am very impressed you cand delve into this level of detail !

[woody110] 13/2/2024 18:39

noticed that Stephanie Colloud has been added to "site heads" new group formed, and mark caswell has Been taken out of the senior management section and put in this group, also interestingly that they are recruiting again, over the last few weeks, a few get added every 3/4 days, up to 13 new positions and also noted they are building a group of engineers for Capex, including engineers director etc etc, must correspond with the planning, and expansion, but all good signs

[dominiccummings] 13/2/2024 17:27

Doing something 'new'....
Integrating 2 other companies.....
Companies taken over are in 2 other countries....

What is there for the market to worry about?
(Not saying they SHOULD worry. Just giving a potential other perspective.)

[steeplejack] 13/2/2024 16:36

OXB is moving with interest rate expectations.With US inflation exceeding expectations today,the likelihood of early cuts in interest rates has receded.Down go the lossmakers.In the absence of the company making a reassuring update there's nothing to compromise this simplistic response.When the company stated it would update in "due course",one sensed the management weren't going to rush.Anyway,it was what it is. It's disappointing.Perhaps the company is rather disaffected with the stockmarket in light of the poor share price response to the ABL/IM deal.It surprised me.

[harry s truman] 13/2/2024 16:07

takeiteasy,

I'd be very surprised if we hadn't heard anything from OXB before the end of March (7 weeks).

I've floated lots of ideas here as to why we haven't had the updated guidance for 2024 yet (some much more likely than others) but I do think the odds on reason is still just that they are very busy and (maybe also) want to wrap something which is current into the presentation.

Yes our share price might drop a few more pence before then, but essentially we are now where Stuart said we would be when he said (at JPM last year) that they had to finish rightsizing the headcount and then they would have a pretty much infinite cash runway going forwards.

We all knew that last year (August on) when clowns like luminaire were posting here that OXB was going bust (and that I should bear some responsibility for it). Neither was ever true but it still got votes here from the constructive criticism team.

I'm sure that there will at the very least be a call to the covering brokers before the FY results and if that happens then we will find out. I just can't imagine that that they will let the people who we rely on as an interface to the market go blind into another analyst call when their existing forecasts are all over the place. Surely the point is to try to keep these people onside - not make them look daft?