Syncona Share Discussion Threads

[ltinvestor] 27/3/2019 07:52

Autolus up 7.89% on Nasdaq after their update and presentation

[ltinvestor] 26/3/2019 10:37

Autolus results seem very encouraging...

[luxaeterna1] 25/3/2019 09:24

Autolus have an R&D presentation with analysts tomorrow, followed by a trial update and poster presentation on the AUTO1 trial (mainly targeting leukemia/lymphona-type diseases, B-ALL etc.).

[ltinvestor] 20/3/2019 16:59

... and yet another significant director purchase.

[davidlloyd] 20/3/2019 15:34

Interesting action here today.

[ltinvestor] 19/3/2019 20:59

Legal and General 4.05% holding..,equates to approx £65m!

[luxaeterna1] 19/3/2019 16:57

Ooph, one of the Sync Directors purchased £50k of shares this week, RNS out. Another bought £40k.

I know they'll be on good salaries, but that's still 3-4 months salary, not a trivial wad of cash to re-invest.

[tiger blue] 16/3/2019 10:16

nice trade!!

[ltinvestor] 16/3/2019 09:57

Tiger Blue.Check my post number 200 !!

[robow] 16/3/2019 09:24

from Investment Trust Insider

Syncona’s funds boss exits as Bacit portfolio wound down
By Vicky McKeever 15 Mar, 2019

Syncona’s funds boss exits as Bacit portfolio wound down
Arabella Cecil, head of fund investments at Syncona (SYNC), is leaving the top-performing life sciences investment trust after the company decided to sell most of her portfolio which was hit hard by stock market falls at the end of last year.

Cecil was chief financial officer at the Battle Against Cancer Investment Trust (Bacit), an innovative fund that persuaded the fund managers in which it invested to waive their fees so the money could be donated to research into fighting the disease. At the end of 2016 it merged with Syncona Partners, the investment arm of the Wellcome Trust, to form the UK's largest listed life sciences fund with a current market value of £1.6 billion.

For the past two years Syncona has used the legacy Bacit portfolio of hedge and absolute return funds as a pool of capital to finance successful investments in 10 start-up life sciences companies. These include cancer specialists Autolus and Nightstar which it helped found and float on the Nasdaq, the US technology stock exchange, last year.

At the end of December, Cecil's funds portfolio stood at £282 million, alongside £130 million of cash, having generated £40 million of gains since the merger.

However, according to Syncona's broker Numis Securities, it fell 8.7% in the fourth quarter as global stock markets tumbled. Although this was less than the 10.2% slide in the FTSE All-Share, it was a disappointing performance for a portfolio that sought to minimise stock market volatility and was equivalent to a £3.9 million loss.

This week Syncona announced it would wind down the funds portfolio in the next three-to-six months and hold more cash and cash equivalents. Its aim was to focus on 'liquidity and capital preservation' it said.

Cecil will remain with Syncona while the portfolio is run down.

Syncona chief executive Martin Murphy said: 'I would like to thank our head of fund Investments, Arabella Cecil, for her great contribution to Syncona, successfully managing the fund investments as part of our strategic pool of capital to enable us to fund our vision to create global leaders in life science.'

Cecil's departure will leave two senior directors from Bacit at Syncona: Thomas Henderson, the brother of fund manager James Henderson, who founded the investment trust in 2012 and who sits on its board as a non-executive director; and Jeremy Tigue, the former F&C (FCIT) fund manager who has been its chairman since launch.

The plan to liquidate the old Bacit funds portfolio comes as Syncona's red-hot share prices shows signs of cooling down. Investor excitement at Syncona's apparent prowess in backing the right firms at the cutting edge of diagnostic developments has seen its shares nearly double in the past three years, rising nearly 33% last year alone to peak earlier this month at a 51% premium over net asset value (NAV).

However, since 4 March, when the company revealed it would receive a £135 million windfall from the £633 sale of Nightstar to Biogen, the shares have fallen 16% or 47.5p to 247p as the premium has halved to 26% over NAV.

A sale this week by Wellcome Trust of 57 million or 8.7% of Syncona shares may help set a new floor for the price. The shares were placed with institutional investors at 245p, a 5% discount to their share price on Wednesday's close. Wellcome had planned to sell 45 million shares but increased the amount it was disposing in response to investor demand, according to Numis. It made £141 million, retains a holding of 28.1% in Syncona and has undertaken not to sell any more for 180 days.

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[ltinvestor] 16/3/2019 07:51

Tiger Blue.I wouldn’t be too disappointed with the placing.I followed the institutions and purchased a further 25k at £2.46..,Imo, the share price will be much higher in 12 months time...

[tiger blue] 15/3/2019 09:20

Goldman will have introduced their institutional contacts in this placing and more US investors should now appear on the register. Valuing the company on an NAV basis will become increasingly irrelevant with the funds run down and a US level of biotech rating would do no harm.
Slightly disappointed to see Wellcome sell down but they are a charitable trust and have now locked in more than their original investment in setting up Syncona. The only thing that royally p....s me off is increasing the size of the placing. Obviously the brokers like to place lots of stock as they get more commission but if you only supply 80% of the demand you leave people to top up in the aftermarket instead of satisfying everyone in the placing, when they have no need to top up!

[alan@bj] 15/3/2019 08:54

....and maybe Syncona will announce a new investment or two by then. The strong institutional demand for Wellcome's shares was encouraging. I doubt they've bought the shares as a punt.

[chc15] 15/3/2019 08:22

Maybe, but then wellcome will just dump more..

[ltinvestor] 14/3/2019 18:36

Wellcome intended selling 45m shares but due to heavy demand for the stock 57m shares were sold at £2.45.I expect the share price to continue its climb over the coming months...

[luxaeterna1] 13/3/2019 09:58

Gyroscope has been in phase 1/2 trial for 2 months now, Achilles trial due to start H2 2019 (probably), Freeline hemophilia trials since October, Autolus have many trials ongoing.

[davemac3] 13/3/2019 07:11

Yes looks like some already knew about this, another example showing how bent the city is

[ltinvestor] 13/3/2019 07:07

We now know the reason for the slight fall.I presume the shares will be placed and then the placing price announced.

[alan@bj] 12/3/2019 18:43

Very informative. Thanks Tiger.

[tiger blue] 12/3/2019 18:20

Syncona is an investment trust whose business is life sciences, since the Wellcome deal the investment funds side is there ONLY to fund the life sciences business, they have simply chosen to accelerate the encashment of this.

NEGATIVES- no dividend (this was funded from the income on the funds side).
Increased cash drag, short term excess cash earning relatively little. I suspect this is what continues to pressure the share price.

POSITIVES - reduced volatility from funds market exposure and greater certainty of available cash to fund projects.
They clearly feel the existing portfolio and any additions under consideration are of sufficient quality that they will justify having the cash available to deploy in the relatively short term. Very little cash is spent in the earliest stages, perhaps a million or two during the investigative process, but once there is confidence in the science the spending ramp up may be significant. They view investee businesses in terms of what they are capable of being worth if successful, typically £500m or £1bn candidates. Autolus is fairly well known now, but look at Gyroscope which has just dosed the first patient for dry AMD. That is a huge market which would dwarf the rare retinal diseases targeted by the now sold Nightstar, but as it progresses may deserve major investment.
One other point - I was fortunate to attend the institutional investor day at Wellcome after the Syncona deal was originally announced. There were a lot of interested US investors there but that has not yet translated into major holdings, I queried this much later and was told that the US investors prefer a pure play and could not get their head round the hybrid nature, or at least would not invest with the funds side still attached. This may be another reason they have accelerated the drawdown, perhaps with the encouragement of new joint broker Goldman Sachs, who will find it easier to market the company now to US institutions.

[alan@bj] 12/3/2019 17:33

bbonsall - I hope you're right. The announcement didn't make sense to me. Why would an investment company want to liquidate its investments to hold more cash? But that's what the announcement said.

[luxaeterna1] 12/3/2019 17:08

It sounds like SYNC have around £400m tied up in investment funds, it seems they plan on converting much of that in preparation for serious scale-up of their portfolio.

Would love to see AUTO and Freeline scale up, Achilles looks promising but early days.

[bbonsall] 12/3/2019 13:02

It seems to me that the fall in share price on this announcement means the market has misunderstood the statement.
When Syncona says it is reducing its fund investmens and increasing its cash holding it seems the market thinks it is reducing its investments to fund start ups.
Instead, I am thinking it wants to take cash out of managed investment funds to give Syncona the cash to pounce on further opportunities in backing more small companies engaged in researching and developing new medical therapies.
This is Syncona’s core activity, not investing in managed funds.

[brexitplus] 12/3/2019 07:38

RUN DOWN OF FUNDS

Looks like plenty of investment opportunities ahead.


Syncona Limited

Update on management of strategic capital pool

12 March 2019

Syncona Ltd, a leading healthcare company focused on founding, building and funding global leaders in life science, today announces an update on the management of its capital pool.

Over the last two years, Syncona has evolved the investment parameters of its strategic capital pool to focus on liquidity and capital preservation in order to support Syncona's strategy and key goal of founding, building and funding global leaders in life science. To support this strategy, we will be simplifying the management of Syncona's capital pool. Accordingly, over the next three to six months, Syncona will be significantly reducing its fund investments and further increasing its weighting to cash, cash equivalents and fixed income products with higher liquidity and lower volatility.

Martin Murphy, CEO, Syncona Investment Management Limited, said: "This is a natural next step for the management of our capital pool. Our life science portfolio has generated significant value to date, with the offer for Nightstar demonstrating our ability to deliver strong returns. Successful life science companies scale rapidly, and our existing portfolio is now at the stage where our strategic capital pool ideally positions Syncona to capitalise on the commercial opportunities ahead of us.

I would like to thank our Head of Fund Investments, Arabella Cecil, for her great contribution to Syncona, successfully managing the fund investments as part of our strategic pool of capital to enable us to fund our vision to create global leaders in life science."