Oxford Biomedica Share Discussion Threads

[harry s truman] 09/7/2024 10:06

It's only days since they added c£17m to their cash pile and they have told us previously that this year they are roughly breakeven on operations. What they aren't breakeven on is capex and therefore the 10m euros (which IM are chipping in) to tailor ABL to OXB's needs + whatever OXB spend turning Boston into a LentiVector hub will mean a small overall loss - UNLESS - (drumroll) - something happens to change that.

Hopefully I've been clear in the past, but my point about the senior staff isn't that some of them decided not to buy - it's that all of them didn't - which strongly implies they couldn't - as normally (even in bad years) someone would fill an ISA or something.

As mentioned before on the thread - and with a reminder very recently - Stuart and Frank are both under a contractual obligation to buy in the open periods. This again reaffirms the logic to me that something was in the background during the results which meant the senior staff had market sensitive knowledge which wasn't yet public.

[boadicea] 08/7/2024 22:37

Raw management figures for the year and half year are usually available internally to management within a week or so of the period end. This is when many companies choose to give an update with guidance towards the likely range of the final 'polished' figures which typically appear two to four months later. So the next week or so would be a logical option for an update on the contract and cash positions which must be known.
Failure to do so might spark more conjecture of the dog that didn't bark type (c.f. the directors that didn't buy). The management need strong positive reasons for withholding information from shareholders. Avoiding the possible inconvenience is not one of them.

[harry s truman] 08/7/2024 15:22

I suppose it's always a risk, but then it's a business built on risk (will drugs work, will the trials succeed, is something better in the works, etc.).

I'll not do the full speech again, but if the takeover on the cheap was ever on the cards then I think it would have happened by now (or at least have been tried). For all the reasons listed previously then I don't think that's a worry.

Moving the listing? OXB have flirted for ages with the possibility of a dual listing. We were told at the time (without using the exact words) that it was part of the decision in the 50:1 consolidation. For reference that's just over 6 years ago.

In the near term I think moving from FT Smallcap to FTSE250 is the only likely move for OXB ;)

The reply to Phil (about quasi-quarterly reporting) was unusually informative and for reasons I outlined in the posts I removed I think that because our gap between FY results and the interims is only 5 months, that has to be soon (very possibly this week). Hopefully it will be worth reading.

[steeplejack] 08/7/2024 13:41

Todays Times,business section.The chief executive of Oxford Nanopore has warned that Britain's most promising companies will be "snapped up" in takeovers or will move their listings to New York unless the new Labour government accelerates financial reforms begun under the Conservatives.Gordon Sanghera, 63, who has led the genetic sequencing company since it was spun out of Oxford University almost 20 years ago, said that while there was some "great stuff" happening with pension and stock exchange reforms designed to boost inflows into struggling UK stocks and shares.....

[harry s truman] 08/7/2024 09:15

25,000 shares in the first hour seems a bit more like it today. Will that continue or was it just orders placed over the weekend? I guess we will see.

[harry s truman] 07/7/2024 09:26

Wise words takeiteasy, but some of this has a long history - so the occasional skirmish separated by long periods periods of truce is actually normal.

Appreciate that my response here is a bit of a stuck record, but we are well overdue news now. We know for certain that we are due to double / have already doubled our number of commercial manufacturing contracts. I don't imagine that they plan to keep that customer confidential (or even think it's possible regarding manufacturing records / tracing for the approved drug), but for some reason the customer obviously wants it that way at present (perhaps not wanting to irk their current manufacturer until they have to?). Sooner or later they will tell us who and what - perhaps in the interim statement which Phil told us about the other day.

I outlined my logic for that being early July (i.e. this week) in my removed post, so you never know - could be an interesting week.

[takeiteasy] 07/7/2024 06:56

Chill guys - this is one of the best boards by a mile on ADVFN...Harry you get a lot of love here...so ignore a few pokes in the ribs from time to time if that is how it feels...the stock is flat lining and we think it should be getting some buying interest and so it seems all rather odd atm..

[marwalker] 06/7/2024 15:09

I see at least you have the decency to remove a very crude post before many could read it

[marwalker] 06/7/2024 09:44

Thanks Phil so in a nutshell we can expect 2 extra updates annually equidistant between Interims and finals

[philh75] 06/7/2024 01:05

Btw oxb did come back to me regarding update (replied 5th June)

Thank you for your email and interest in Oxford Biomedica.

We are aiming to put out updates on a quarterly basis, two of these would be our regular full and year and half year financial results (normally put out in April and September each year).

Since this is the first year of doing this we do not have a fixed schedule yet for the two other updates, but we are aiming for one of them to be between now and September. Once we have a full year’s ‘cycle’ completed you should expect these updates to be more predictable.

(So I would expect an update before August.)

[harry s truman] 04/7/2024 19:00

This is of interest

Cargo Therapeutics and Kyverna Therapeutics both recently named partners of OXB.

Every chance here that at least one of the others is an undisclosed partner too.

[harry s truman] 04/7/2024 17:55

Xoptimist,

Absolutely.

I'm eternal optimist and you are taking a more measured approach.

It's a little like when Frank was asked why he didn't put Phase 2 trials going the BLA route into his "partnered late stage column" and replied with words to the effect that it's because there is more risk at that stage and he prefers his corporate surprises to be nice ones. Can't really fault that approach either.

[takeiteasy] 04/7/2024 17:42

wish I had followed the bot trader and topped up on 2/7 - too late now I guess:)



nai etc

[xoptimist] 04/7/2024 17:33

Thanks Harry. Given the strong share price performance of last 48 hours - and the signals from the technical chart this afternoon - it would seem that you may be more right than me about the timing of when OXB will hit the threshold for re-admittance to the FTSE250 (which I think we both agree is when OXB passes 590-600p per share or thereabouts). The nicest thing about this disagreement is that whether you are right or I am right we both agree that somewhere in the next 9 months a) OXB share price will be almost double what it has been for most of the past month and the highest it has been since April 2022 and b) OXB will be readmitted to the FTSE250 in the time period. If this is our only disagreement then its a very nice one to have.

[harry s truman] 04/7/2024 14:52

Xoptimist,

I don't think there's much (if anything) to argue with there, though myself I feel they could still get back into the FTSE250 this year if the ducks all line up.

If the long term (2026) turns out to be anything like RBC's forecast (which is on the conservative side with some of their weightings) then we are all golden anyway. What matters is nearer term, and that of course will be driven by news significant enough for it to be announced as it will affect the current guidance.

I've given my thoughts on what that might be (a few things we can guess at + an unknown number that we can't) probably too many times, so will be waiting for that news now. Hopefully soon.

[xoptimist] 04/7/2024 14:03

Correction: The chairman has purchased almost a quarter of a million shares in the past 28 months

[xoptimist] 04/7/2024 14:01

I think the issue of directors buying shares in the open period is an interesting and useful topic and most likely an indicator of something important and value accretive happening in the company. Of course this is speculation but its educated and intelligent speculation - and no-one is being asked to accept it as fact or to act upon it.

The proposition as HST has set out several times is simple: In the previous open period in September 2023 at least 101,000 shares were purchased by the directors a third of which were bought by the Chairman (36,130 shares). Indeed our Chairman has been regularly buying shares in the open periods and has bought almost half a million shares in the past 28 months since March 2022 at an average price per share of 647p (so he is very under water). If our Chairman and our other board members believe the forward guidance presented by management in April - a 35% CAGR with revenues hitting a quarter of a billion pounds at the end of 2026 (in 29 months) and 45-50m pounds in editda - then you would expect at least some purchases in the open period when shares could have been bought at between 250p and 300p - and which would have continued to average down the price. We should also remember than both our CEO and our CFO are contractually obligated to buy shares to a certain percentage of their salaries. And if Frank is going to have to buy these shares I am sure he would have rather bought hem at 250-300p in April than at 400p or 500p later this year. (He did make his first purchase of 20000 shares in September 2023).

So its very odd that with such positive guidance in April no director jumped in to buy and I think it is intelligent speculation that there were in a restrictive period due to a deal.

At the end of the day this - or any deals being percolated and announced - give us something to speculate about as a sort of enjoyable hobby or past time - but don't amount to much in the long term. The value/share price of our company will be driven by fundamentals and principally by management delivering step by step - milestone by milestone - on their forward guidance and hopefully doing better than forecast by bringing in lucrative deals even if we dont get to hear much about them.

We had a great, optimistic and confident update in April which marked the start of the OXB turnaround/renaissance. If the update we are expecting in the next couple of weeks and the update we will get in mid September are similarly positive the share price will continue to rise robustly. And OXB will slowly erase its post covid negative hangover and restore investor confidence as we head closer to earnings. And the company will then be able once again to be valued on industry appropriate metrics. Whilst OXB doesn't have many, if any, direct comparables a 4-5x sales (with 105m shares) will deliver a valuation of 675-830p sometime next year

And then at some point in my opinion next year when the share price goes above 600p (probably, conservatively, after the April full year results presentation) we will be readmitted to the FTSE250 and with that a bunch of institutional activity. The challenge for OXB then will be the same as it is now - how to generate a steady flow of news tidbits to keep investor interest alive in an industry which increasingly binds us to secrecy and confidentiality. Frank and Co will need to fight that battle with our clients to give us some ability to generate news and celebrate our successes.

[harry s truman] 04/7/2024 13:23

I don't think the GE matters as much as it used to. When it was Thatcher vs Foot then there was a huge difference between the parties and him winning over her would have made a significant difference in almost every policy.

As someone pointed out recently (I forget which newspaper) on policy analysis and public spending the current Conservatives are actually to the left of Blairs '97 landslide Labour government on most issues. There is little to separate a big spending blue party from a big spending red party where most of the policies overlap anyway.

It will be interesting to see the result though.

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takeiteasy 4 Jul '24 - 08:22 - 8235 of 8239

Perhaps the big lull here is linked to GE pause - perhaps when all the dust settles PIs may return to the LSE - been quite a while now of drifting around 3 quid...

[takeiteasy] 04/7/2024 11:57

felt like a long hibernation here ....

[mirabeau] 04/7/2024 11:09

Looking frisky

[dominiccummings] 04/7/2024 10:18

Looks like Pippa Radcliffe needs a new handbag....