Oxford Biomedica Share Discussion Threads

[cousinit] 07/4/2024 12:11

I've been doing a bit of digging around to try and get a better handle on some of the OXB moving parts. I'm guessing this may be more directed at Harry given I may have failed to 'log' similar points already made!

In reading some of the reports and transcripts, I am wondering if there are multiple pieces of work going on with Serum.

There has been the much flagged malaria vaccine potential, and OXB have referred to up to 1,000L vaccine manufacturing in the Serum MoU.

But there is also mention of up to 2,000L reservation (with an appropriate fee) in the future OxBox fit out of the fallow area. In looking at these, the CEPI preparation for future pandemics 'Disease X' and '100 day mission' might be a connection here?

The main focus seems to be on having a rapid response and equitable vaccine production globally (so more developing world than developed) but could there be something for OXB here?



'The CEPI Secretariat underwent several increases in the first years of its existence and as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The strategy for 2022-26 requires new capabilities and capacities, including in the areas of Disease X vaccine development, late-stage development, other biologic countermeasures, diagnostics, regulatory science, operations, MANUFACTURING CAPACITY and innovations, and advocacy. As an epidemic preparedness and response organisation, CEPI will continue to retain its nimbleness as it builds the capabilities needed for effective operations, sound investment management, and active engagement with Coalition partners.'



'CEPI and Global Affairs Canada deepen collaboration to strengthen international biosecurity and advance the 100 Days Mission.. . This funding builds on Global Affairs Canada's investment of CAD 100 million announced earlier this year to support CEPI's five-year strategic plan.'



'To prepare for such a scenario, CEPI is investing up to $30 million to build upon SII’s proven track record of rapid response to outbreaks of infectious disease, expanding the company’s existing ability to swiftly supply investigational vaccines in the face of epidemic and pandemic threats.'

[marcusl2] 06/4/2024 18:28

2012: Emily Whitehead is 1st person to be treated and cured using CAR-T (by

2024: 35,000 patients treated with CAR-T + TCR-T.
No better #yeswecan story in our field.

[harry s truman] 05/4/2024 11:27

Today's spot prize for detective work there Phil.

It all adds to the mounting pile of circumstantial evidence that OXB are doing an awful lot better than the market thinks (or is willing to accept at this time).

[philh75] 05/4/2024 09:21

linking Frank with Peter (new NED), they have worked together before extensively.



Vetter Pharma, where Peter is CEO is all about Fill and Finish and different packaging formats for end user use. I guess his skill set is to understand how the market needs different end products packaged etc. from our facilities

[philh75] 05/4/2024 09:14

A LinkedIn post from Seb from a couple of months back, expanding from 8->14 suites will be substantial capacity improvement I would think.

We are extremely happy to onboard today another 150 colleagues from Lyon and Strasbourg, France as part of the Oxford Biomedica network.
We are excited to announce that we have acquired ABL Europe from Institut Mérieux, a well-established global CDMO. This acquisition increases our Process and Analytical Development capacity and takes our total number of GMP suites to 14 in 7 facilities across the globe. We are delighted to now be able to offer our clients:
Combined >50 years of viral vector process development and manufacturing expertise
A footprint in France for batch release in Europe, UK and USA
Strengthened expertise across Adenovirus, Lentiviruses and AAVs with new capabilities in vaccines, oncolytic viruses and immunotherapy
Increased capacity in process and analytical development and early-stage manufacturing
6 additional EMA approved GMP suites and 1 additional fill finish suite

I have no doubt that this new OXB network has the ability to deliver what our clients expect, Quality, Experience, Availability at the right time and access to expertise!

[icejelly] 04/4/2024 15:54

Post of the day goes to Tuco.

[harry s truman] 04/4/2024 13:35

reddirish,

OXB are actually in with Microsoft and others already, see



The world is just mad at the moment, but maybe best to wait now - soon you will get the state of play from the horse's mouth.

[harry s truman] 04/4/2024 13:32

Thanks Tuco.

I always try to stress somewhere that it's just an opinion, but of late the circumstantial evidence in favour of OXB seems overwhelming.

Appreciate I'm bringing coals to Newcastle with these points, but:-

What did Institut Merieux see which the market doesn't and why?

We have had the OXB explanation that IM basically wanted to build a mini French OXB before eventually deciding that "if you can't beat them, join them", but even so...

There is some "factor X" here with OXB which we take for granted but IM find compelling. Whether that was discovered through Roch, or Frank or Seb (who are of course French), or by IM's own surveillance, I guess we will never know, but if you look at the deal IM offered exclusively to us, then it's pretty much unprecedented.

They offered us Transgene's old manufacturing plant and labs in Strasbourg, along with the existing orderbook, and also the ABL labs in Lyon, again with their existing order book / workload, for 15m euros worth of shares printed at more than twice the market price at the time of issue (worth 6 million euros?). On top of that they are injecting 10m euro cash into ABL to ease it into exactly what OXB want to use the facilities for without costing OXB anything?

In a nutshell they have seen "factor X" which convinced them to give us something quite valuable for virtually nothing in exchange for becoming part of the OXB family.

Accept that and Institut Merieux who are very old hands in this business can obviously see something which the market doesn't yet see.

What the market does see (and this wasn't public before the IM approach and therefore can't have influenced them) is Seb's sales team selling work at such a pace that (certainly for early stage work) if it wasn't for Boston and the new ABL facilities then we would have to be either giving very long delivery lead times now or just turning work down - which is not normal or reflective of reported market conditions elsewhere.

OK, countering this we seem to have daily news stories now that the London Stock Exchange is finished, but regardless of how true that eventually turns out to be, you wouldn't expect it to undervalue a particular company because of where it is listed - especially as we have shares sold OTC on other exchanges - like OXB.DF in the US (and also have very supportive US analysts like Joe at HCW).

Time and time again I come back to the same point which is this combination of OXB being seen as a pandemic vaccine stock / being under the radar as a smallcap / being too difficult to understand / having evolved or reinvented itself too many times. When you couple all that with the fact that they will soon announce a very big loss for last year in the same presentation which they will forecast breakeven (hopefully better) for this year, then you can sort of understand the very sceptical approach from the likes of Numis, which is of course "OK, but we'll wait and see thanks".

9 covering brokers on OXB's website. I think I'm correct in saying that only one has revised based upon recent events, with the rest waiting for the FY results presentation before crunching the numbers and revisiting.

If that presentation achieves what we hope then all the analysts should up their targets so that the consensus moves much closer to RBC's figure, because at the moment that 180p target from the low analyst and 5 of the covering 9 rating OXB only as "hold" is doing us no favours at all.

[reddirish] 04/4/2024 12:57

According to an article in last week's Economist, investors transferred over $31b in equity funding into health-care related AI stocks between 2019 and 2022. That number can only have grown massively in the past year as the AI bubble has inflated further. Is this a possible explanation for the dearth of buyers in the biotech area over the same timescale? Portfolio managers will have kept their allocations to 'health' fairly constant, but moved from one subsector into the newly exciting one. The flows will reverse once the drug development firms - which are the users of the new AI tools - begin to accelerate successful projects, and as the AI bubble deflates. When might that be? I'd give it two more years.

[tuco 1] 04/4/2024 11:36

Harry,
that post above encapsulates the situation succinctly and elegantly . Like you I am biased as a very long term shareholder , but on a risk-reward basis , at the current share price , I have seen little else that looks this compelling in over twenty years .

Tuco.

[cousinit] 04/4/2024 11:09

I'm not sure how much money in the market is (even loosely) anchored to fundamental value these days.

The most likely attraction for adding new investors is a rapidly rising share price...

[harry s truman] 04/4/2024 11:09

As brief as I ever can be here, I honestly think that OXB is one of those shares which is too difficult for most laypeople to get their heads around.

So, if you are a steelmaker or a goldminer or a telecoms company or a clothes retailer, then the market can compartmentalise you very quickly, there will be lots of analysts who understand your business really well, the investors can associate your business with what you do, and it goes on.

As our current CEO says (remember, this is a 60+ year old very successful CDMO exec), he wasn't really aware of OXB until the pandemic. If that's true of an industry insider, then what OXB did (did very well, but that's sort of irrelevant) was so niche that very few people had even heard of them, let alone understood their business - until the pandemic, which even then actually gave them a "name" for doing something else other than their speciality.

Up until May 2013 OXB is a biotech company. Primarily gene delivery. Very difficult to value a portfolio of research and trial drugs for such a specialised area.

May 2013 until the end of 2023, OXB is this almost unique hybrid company which was biotech drug development for our own drugs + service provider for the likes of Orchard, Novartis, BMS, etc., which totalled 25 as of the interims last year. Really difficult to find another company like that to compare to (biotech research / drug discovery in gene delivery for themselves + CDMO service provider for 25+ others).

In less words, there are many CDMOs to compare to and a huge number of biotech companies, but if anyone can find a gene delivery biotech company which is also a CDMO then I'll give them today's spot prize. So what do they compare to?

From the end of 2023 onwards OXB is no longer biotech and has stopped the development spend on its own in house drugs, so is now a pure play CDMO which should be much easier for the market to understand.

The trouble with the last point here is that the other CDMOs we can all name (Lonza, TF, Samsung, Catalent, Charles River, etc.) all have wide portfolios. By that I mean they make biologics, small molecule, tablets, anything which they can make money producing, and usually tagged onto the end of that business is a CGT (cell and gene therapy division) which does viral vectors and such (like OXB).

OXB is a pure play CGT CDMO, which as some of you will remember from a recent webcast, Seb seemed to imply is only us. So yet again, albeit unintentionally, OXB might have ended up in a position where the market is looking for something to compare against and struggling.

I think this is our major issue - under the radar and too difficult to understand.

The pure play CGT will either be a blessing or a curse. If it works out well then the gearing will be amazing as our whole business is tied to a market which is predicted to explode and OXB themselves say they see 1,600+ potential customers.

Should that market prediction go the way of the nuclear powered vacuum cleaner then obviously it wouldn't be as good, but what is the likelihood? On just one drug we provide an essential vector for, over 6,000 people have already received the cancer treatment for a disease stage which was previously untreatable. That market is here now.

In the past I've mentioned many times a rough / rule of thumb sector average for CDMO of 5.5x sales as a company valuation. It's not perfect, just a ballpark, but on the "low end" £126m forecast for this year, OXB should be around £700m or 70p per share. On the high end of the forecast £134m would be as near as doesn't matter to RBC's mid 12 month target of 740p. I heard the other day that someone had now put out 770p, but I don't know who that is.

This year the analysts have to start valuing us as a CDMO. The new problem (for the analysts) as I mention above, is that the sector average covers companies making everything from over the counter drugs costing a few pounds to million dollar personalised treatments. It's an average, but CGT should be weighted higher.

As it stands today, with a £200m market cap OXB is trading on 1.5x this year's forecast sales. There's obviously something very wrong with the rating there.

Personally I think OXB eventually ends up much more than the sector average, simply because of the speciality (and forecast need) of what they do very well.

For the moment though, we remain under the radar, ill understood outside of our industry / customers, and still labelled as a pandemic stock (post pandemic).

I'm hopeful that 4 weeks on Monday OXB kill that perception.

It will be the first time Stuart talks about 2025.
They will stress that the drug discovery business ended with the 2023 loss.
The coverage of the results will be of a CDMO company with a good forecast for 2024.

So, the argument against any biotech is always "jam tomorrow" (good results at the end of the next / current trial). OXB are not a biotech company any more.

They are a pure play CGT CDMO and will give forecasts for this year and next. Next being record revenue which will beat the pandemic vaccine revenues which were quoted by everyone as being exceptional.

I can't see them paying a dividend until the loan is repaid and the last 20% in Boston is ours. At that point then I guess it's on the cards, but if you look at Lonza then it's not a big dividend. If OXB pull in the numbers which they are projecting (over £300m by 2027) and if the multiple placed on OXB by the market reflects them being pure CGT in that market, then I don't think anyone sat on those shares would mind the lack of dividend.

[marwalker] 04/4/2024 10:36

If you looked back to the financial pages in the past you would see most stocks with P/E ratios and dividends Today there are so many stocks with little chance of a dividendI think there is a return to that earlier norm and timesAs I have said before OXB needs a prospect of divi to attract todays investors

[boadicea] 04/4/2024 09:27

I disagree to the extent that I think the upside is likely to be distinctly near term - e.g. within 6 - 12 months as the published metrics unfold to justify a sensible price. On the other hand I don't think the upside will be as large as the more optimistic projections suggest due to the general market malaise in the sector.
If share price momentum should take it briefly into anything approaching euphoric (or even optimistic) territory it will almost certainly subside quite sharply - again!
Also allow that many who have hung on from higher levels may be pleased to get out at their break-even point.

[takeiteasy] 04/4/2024 08:04

We are in danger of over-complicating our thinking here, across the board biotech has been in a longer term unloved cycle and is a serial under performer against the tech market - for all the reasons we know. Any biotech investment is starting with one hand tied behind the back until rates come down again and all the other reasons that the sector is so unloved start to resolve.

And I do own here for all the reaons that excite Harry, but let's be very realistic on the near term upside...dyor and no advice etc

[steeplejack] 04/4/2024 07:53

“It's apples and oranges isn't it?”….indeed and lemons..

Very different animals Redx and OXB yes and i can only hope that today’s enfeebled Uk stockmarkets will be suitably discerning but that’s not immediately evident.

[steeplejack] 03/4/2024 11:52

If OXB doesn’t rerate then i would suggest that going private or becoming an integral part of IMT is a possible option that management might consider.From todays Times-


Chairwoman Jane Griffiths of Redx said company’s valuation did not reflect its “track record or fu-
ture potential and is not conducive to raising the level of capital required for our growing clinical portfolio”. As a private company, Redx, whose chief executive is Lisa Anson, believes it can access “a broader universe of speciality investors” and, in turn, “a larger quantum of future funding”.
The company said it may pursue a listing “on an alternative exchange at a future date”. Its shares, which were offered at 85p when they floated, tumbled by 64.6 per cent, or 12p, to close at 6½p.

Alistair Osborne is fairly scathing in his Times editorial about the Redx decision to delist,referencing a chequered history and suggesting that its patently not in the interests of minority private client shareholders but the direction of travel for a lot of smaller companies listed on the UK exchange is pretty clear.The market simply isnt doing its job and hoping that there will be a damascene experience that will effect a swift rerating of stocks like OXB might be a tad optimistic.

[harry s truman] 03/4/2024 11:36

I will be cautious of how I word this one as I don't want to be detained by the Scottish secret police under the new thought crime laws, but (but, but, but) whilst I'm always cautious of the AIM "wild west" (having been fleeced there myself in the past) I'd wonder why a public company with Phase 2 data / partnerships news due on their lead drugs very shortly would want to delist beforehand and become a private company.

I'd stress at this point that I've now seen the error of my ways, corrected my thinking and am currently embracing a windmill whilst singing The Internationale.

[winston wolf] 03/4/2024 08:34

just quoted 192.8 to buy don't assume the trade reporting is accurate

[steeplejack] 03/4/2024 08:22

Could be some ‘tax loss’ selling during final days of the financial year.Meanwhile,another small pharma quits the London exchange.

A drug discovery company plans to quit the London stock market because of its low valuation in a fresh blow to the beleaguered exchange.

Redx Pharma, which joined the London Stock Exchange’s junior market in 2015, has become the second British pharma company to unveil plans to delist in the past week following C4X Discovery.


Charles Hall, head of research at Peel Hunt, the broker, warned that there would be a large number of de-listings to come, “particularly those that are sub-scale where it’s costing them a fair amount of money each year to be quoted. Everything the stock market should be providing, it is not.”

[harry s truman] 02/4/2024 19:03

It's an American oriented website Phil and they are talking about American institutional holders with that total (I should have made that clear).

But the point I'm trying to make is that even with the selling (mostly American) from the beginning of August last year (which you can see on the chart), not only does it not drop by the amount they sold (i.e. other US institutional holders must have bought some of those directly at the time for the bar not to drop further), but they continued to suck up shares in the depressed market and now those US institutions hold more than they did before the dumping started around 431p at the beginning of August last year.

Where have the extra 2m shares come from which weren't previously owned by US institutions and so are on top of those sold by US institutions from August on last year? My money is on small shareholders who were either forced sellers or panic sellers and unfortunately this is something I have noted before - i.e. a crisis is only for the little people. For the big people it's just another opportunity.

In other words someone has done very well and stands to do a lot better.

You're absolutely correct with the point that this includes nothing for NN, Vulpes, IM and all the rest.

I was really continuing here from something Dom found or shared some time ago, which was that since covid the proportion of OXB which is held by very large shareholders has gone up - whilst the price has gone down. What do they know which small PIs are running from?

[philh75] 02/4/2024 18:00

That’s an interesting chart Harry. But how do we read the bar chart as it looks like 8000×1000 is 8 million shares which equals 8% of the hundred million shares in circulation. Institutional ownership is higher than that? (41% top holders according to FT)

[harry s truman] 02/4/2024 16:29

All comes to he who waits Dom.

I think you have mentioned this fact before in the past, but as the recent (post-covid) conditions have driven the share price down, the percentage owned by institutions and large private shareholders has risen dramatically.

A picture painting a thousand words here

To my mind there's only really one good explanation for that, which has been a bonfire of small investors frightened out as a few (and it is only a few) institutions have had to sell, at the same time as others with very deep pockets have been happy to sit there hoovering up the shares at bargain prices.

The story isn't a secret, and we all know it off by heart now, but...

Analyst consensus for revenue in 2024 £125m

OXB said £126m to £134m at the beginning of last month and that may yet improve.

Remember anyone following the low broker (presumably Numis) is seeing £114m revenue and a £53m loss for 2024.

At some point they are either proven correct or have to revise their guidance. I'm guessing that they will revise their guidance after the 29th of this month.

[dominiccummings] 02/4/2024 13:26

and my ire is directed at the so-called investment experts, who don't recognise a superb opportunity!