Company Brief - MBP - Metabolic
Recent failure (lack of efficacy) at PhII trial sent the share diving to 20c. It was 40c for the past year but spiked at $1.10 early 2007 after news of PhII completion (note though PhII was completed then, the result was not known until now).
Cash about $25m
Shares about 300m
NTA based on cash is about 8.3c per share.
Current price is 2.4 times NTA - still too high.
Watch this stock when price falls below 9c.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
Company Brief - AGX - Agenix
AGX - Agenix
- Undergone refocus in priorty since Dec 2005 when failed to find partnership deal for its development product Thromboview.
- Thromboview is a technology that uses radio-labelled antibodies to find blood clot in bodies. The market is the digital imaging market.
- Technologically, Thromboview is a significant product in its field - does not appear to have direct competitor. More importantly it has shown efficacy (positive results) in Phase II trials for Deep Vein Thrombosis DVT.
- It had previously shown to be successful in Phase Ib trial in Pulmonary Emboli PE.
- It is now in a better position to seek partnership deals. Successful future trails may more like increase the share price significantly, although current success are not reflected in the share price.
- Currently AGX has focussed completely on Thromboview. It has divested its other businesses: "Animal Health" and "Human Health". This focus developing a single product present great risk - if Thromboview is successful, AGX price wil shoot up, on the other hand if the trials fail, that may be the end for AGX.
- Financially, the company may survive for quite a while, it has $6m cash, $7m from divestments, another $3-$5m for sale of diagnostic test business. Cash burn is about $3.6 p.a. Optimistically, it can survive 4-5 years at current burn-rate. Price / NTA = 1.264 is very favaourable compared to other biotechs.
- It has an incredible team in its scientific advisory board. Team score is roughly 7.
- Recently one of its strategy to mitigate the one-product risk is that it acquired a Chinese company that has developed an anti-Hepapititis drug to successful Phase III trial. The company has a GMP manufacturing facility, connections with major Chinese medical universities and may provide a platform for AGX into the Chinese and Asian market.
- Major risks identified here. The AGX announcement indicated AGX's board and advisors have experience in doing business in China. However, there is no clear indication from the public information on the directors that indicate any of them had any associations with any biomedical business with China.
- The Chairman Ravi Govindan is also Managing Director of MatrixView - a software company with data compression technology focussed on the medical sector. He is an entrepreneur in Singapore and may have some limited experience with China. However, in an overall sense, I do not believe AGX as a whole has shown that it is able to understand and deal successfully in China. As a result - its planned acquisition is a significant risk.
- In summary, AGX is a company to watch. If there are further trial success with Thromboview, it may be too late to buy into, since the price would have rocketed. Its planned acquistion of the Chinese company is also something to watch for.
Recommendation: Extreme speculative buy at 10c within the next 3 month, given no significant news or events.
- Undergone refocus in priorty since Dec 2005 when failed to find partnership deal for its development product Thromboview.
- Thromboview is a technology that uses radio-labelled antibodies to find blood clot in bodies. The market is the digital imaging market.
- Technologically, Thromboview is a significant product in its field - does not appear to have direct competitor. More importantly it has shown efficacy (positive results) in Phase II trials for Deep Vein Thrombosis DVT.
- It had previously shown to be successful in Phase Ib trial in Pulmonary Emboli PE.
- It is now in a better position to seek partnership deals. Successful future trails may more like increase the share price significantly, although current success are not reflected in the share price.
- Currently AGX has focussed completely on Thromboview. It has divested its other businesses: "Animal Health" and "Human Health". This focus developing a single product present great risk - if Thromboview is successful, AGX price wil shoot up, on the other hand if the trials fail, that may be the end for AGX.
- Financially, the company may survive for quite a while, it has $6m cash, $7m from divestments, another $3-$5m for sale of diagnostic test business. Cash burn is about $3.6 p.a. Optimistically, it can survive 4-5 years at current burn-rate. Price / NTA = 1.264 is very favaourable compared to other biotechs.
- It has an incredible team in its scientific advisory board. Team score is roughly 7.
- Recently one of its strategy to mitigate the one-product risk is that it acquired a Chinese company that has developed an anti-Hepapititis drug to successful Phase III trial. The company has a GMP manufacturing facility, connections with major Chinese medical universities and may provide a platform for AGX into the Chinese and Asian market.
- Major risks identified here. The AGX announcement indicated AGX's board and advisors have experience in doing business in China. However, there is no clear indication from the public information on the directors that indicate any of them had any associations with any biomedical business with China.
- The Chairman Ravi Govindan is also Managing Director of MatrixView - a software company with data compression technology focussed on the medical sector. He is an entrepreneur in Singapore and may have some limited experience with China. However, in an overall sense, I do not believe AGX as a whole has shown that it is able to understand and deal successfully in China. As a result - its planned acquisition is a significant risk.
- In summary, AGX is a company to watch. If there are further trial success with Thromboview, it may be too late to buy into, since the price would have rocketed. Its planned acquistion of the Chinese company is also something to watch for.
Recommendation: Extreme speculative buy at 10c within the next 3 month, given no significant news or events.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Analysis - ACG - Atcor Medical
ACG - Atcor Medical
AtCor is the "Central Blood Pressure" Company – whose flagship product is the SphygmoCor Systems that measures central blood pressure non-invasively. SphygmoCor system is the only FDA-approved non-invasive tool for measuring blood pressure at the heart.
Price($) 0.17
NTA ($) 0.15
P/NTA 1.16
Team 4.1
BurnPeriod 8.53
ProductPipe 5.3
ForeignMarket 5.2
Cash:Debt DebtFree
SphygmoCor is a suite of products and is composed of:
- SphygmoCor Px Aortic BP Waveform Analysis System
- SphygmoCor Vx Pulse Wave Velocity System
- SphygmoCor Mx Aortic BP Monitoring System
- Heart Rate Variability System
The company explains its product as:
"The SphygmoCor family of products provides tools for non-invasive assessment of the cardiovascular system and autonomic function. The technology that powers these products is centred on a transfer function that derives the pressure wave at the ascending aorta. The transfer function is a patented mathematical model of the properties of the brachial artery and provides important central data through a non-invasive recording of the pressure wave at the radial artery. SphygmoCor allows the physician to see the cardiovascular state of the patient, where it really matters – at the heart."
According to AtCor it is the only FDA approved product of its kind. The positive factors include: being a market leader, patented advanced product. The negative factors include: obsolescence if competitors develop better products, company depended on this one platform product.
Financially, AtCor is quite desirable, with the most attractive being its Price to NTA of 1.16. Good values of this ratio is considered to be up to 3.0 for a biotech company - the lower the better. In addition, it can survive over 8 quarters (2 years) given present cash burn rate. This is a company that has significant and increasing revenue streams unlike drug development companies. Expect the revenue to increase in the next year by 100% due to recently developed distributor channels in Asia and Europe. AtCor is also debt free.
The market targeted is not only medical practitioners and hospitals, but also include academic research organisations and big research pharmaceuticals in particular in the US. There is a risk of a superior product developed by competitors, and the risk being amplified by AtCor relying on this single technology, even though it has multi-applications.
The management team has relatively few scientists, but since the platform is now commercially available, this is not a main concern. Although it does indicate that they are not actively developing new products. The management team seems to have the experience to lead the commercialization process.
In summary - the key figures presented above are very positive. The two major risk is the ability of management to increase sales / product domination and the risk of a better product from competitors.
Technical Analysis - started nov/dec 05 at 70c, peaked 85c in Dec05 and declined to stable level of 17c to 20c from Aug 06.
Recommendation: Buy below 18c
Note: CC has just bought shares a few days ago at 18.5c and the ACG had closed at 20c for the last few days.
AtCor is the "Central Blood Pressure" Company – whose flagship product is the SphygmoCor Systems that measures central blood pressure non-invasively. SphygmoCor system is the only FDA-approved non-invasive tool for measuring blood pressure at the heart.
Price($) 0.17
NTA ($) 0.15
P/NTA 1.16
Team 4.1
BurnPeriod 8.53
ProductPipe 5.3
ForeignMarket 5.2
Cash:Debt DebtFree
SphygmoCor is a suite of products and is composed of:
- SphygmoCor Px Aortic BP Waveform Analysis System
- SphygmoCor Vx Pulse Wave Velocity System
- SphygmoCor Mx Aortic BP Monitoring System
- Heart Rate Variability System
The company explains its product as:
"The SphygmoCor family of products provides tools for non-invasive assessment of the cardiovascular system and autonomic function. The technology that powers these products is centred on a transfer function that derives the pressure wave at the ascending aorta. The transfer function is a patented mathematical model of the properties of the brachial artery and provides important central data through a non-invasive recording of the pressure wave at the radial artery. SphygmoCor allows the physician to see the cardiovascular state of the patient, where it really matters – at the heart."
According to AtCor it is the only FDA approved product of its kind. The positive factors include: being a market leader, patented advanced product. The negative factors include: obsolescence if competitors develop better products, company depended on this one platform product.
Financially, AtCor is quite desirable, with the most attractive being its Price to NTA of 1.16. Good values of this ratio is considered to be up to 3.0 for a biotech company - the lower the better. In addition, it can survive over 8 quarters (2 years) given present cash burn rate. This is a company that has significant and increasing revenue streams unlike drug development companies. Expect the revenue to increase in the next year by 100% due to recently developed distributor channels in Asia and Europe. AtCor is also debt free.
The market targeted is not only medical practitioners and hospitals, but also include academic research organisations and big research pharmaceuticals in particular in the US. There is a risk of a superior product developed by competitors, and the risk being amplified by AtCor relying on this single technology, even though it has multi-applications.
The management team has relatively few scientists, but since the platform is now commercially available, this is not a main concern. Although it does indicate that they are not actively developing new products. The management team seems to have the experience to lead the commercialization process.
In summary - the key figures presented above are very positive. The two major risk is the ability of management to increase sales / product domination and the risk of a better product from competitors.
Technical Analysis - started nov/dec 05 at 70c, peaked 85c in Dec05 and declined to stable level of 17c to 20c from Aug 06.
Recommendation: Buy below 18c
Note: CC has just bought shares a few days ago at 18.5c and the ACG had closed at 20c for the last few days.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Analysis - CGS - Cogstate
CGS - Cogstate
Price($) 0.20
NTA ($) 0.08
P/NTA 2.61
Team 4.1
BurnPeriod 3.4
ProductPipe 23.0
ForeignMarket 6.0
Cash:Debt DebtFree
Cogstate develops computerised based cognitive based tests.
They specifically target the drug development market, in particular focussing on a small number of large global pharmaceutical companies. Eg. GSK, Pfizer, Merck, Abott.To date, they have signed more than 4 agreement with the big pharmas.
They have divested their drug development program to focus solely on the cognition test products. This strategy increases the risk of dependence on one product. However, CGS has about 4 products and R&D is ongoing which mitigate this risk to a certain extent.
Their market is mainly the US (where the big pharmas are), in addition to an agreement with a Danish and Japanese company. There is a lack of indication if they will expand to the broader Asian and European markets.
As such, the Foreign Market score and the Product Pipeline score is above average. The Team score is just moderate, but since they are not in the drug development business, it is not crucial to have a large team of scientists (more scientists = higher Team score).
Financially, the company is still making a loss, with most quarterly operations negative except for 06 Qtr3. Receipts were steadily growing over the last 3 quarters but the total operations outflow is at similar level meaning their cost increases the same rate as revenue. The company is debt-free with a cash burn rate survival of 3.41 more quarters.
The shares of CGS have not been very liquid over the last few months. Overall, there is good business strategy, product range and even proven ability of commercialization. However it is still to make sustained profits. Financially, the cash position, although not serious yet, suggests we need to be cautious. Speculatively, their is a high upside, in the event of more agreement with big pharmas.
In Feb 06, the price was still about 10c, but agreements with GSK, directors buying share, divestment of drug development pushed the price to 28c in April and August. Since Nov then the price has steadied around 20c. At the current price of 2.6 times NTA, it is on the low priced side.
All things considered here, and before the release of the 07 half year report, the Recommendation: Buy at 0.17c
Price($) 0.20
NTA ($) 0.08
P/NTA 2.61
Team 4.1
BurnPeriod 3.4
ProductPipe 23.0
ForeignMarket 6.0
Cash:Debt DebtFree
Cogstate develops computerised based cognitive based tests.
They specifically target the drug development market, in particular focussing on a small number of large global pharmaceutical companies. Eg. GSK, Pfizer, Merck, Abott.To date, they have signed more than 4 agreement with the big pharmas.
They have divested their drug development program to focus solely on the cognition test products. This strategy increases the risk of dependence on one product. However, CGS has about 4 products and R&D is ongoing which mitigate this risk to a certain extent.
Their market is mainly the US (where the big pharmas are), in addition to an agreement with a Danish and Japanese company. There is a lack of indication if they will expand to the broader Asian and European markets.
As such, the Foreign Market score and the Product Pipeline score is above average. The Team score is just moderate, but since they are not in the drug development business, it is not crucial to have a large team of scientists (more scientists = higher Team score).
Financially, the company is still making a loss, with most quarterly operations negative except for 06 Qtr3. Receipts were steadily growing over the last 3 quarters but the total operations outflow is at similar level meaning their cost increases the same rate as revenue. The company is debt-free with a cash burn rate survival of 3.41 more quarters.
The shares of CGS have not been very liquid over the last few months. Overall, there is good business strategy, product range and even proven ability of commercialization. However it is still to make sustained profits. Financially, the cash position, although not serious yet, suggests we need to be cautious. Speculatively, their is a high upside, in the event of more agreement with big pharmas.
In Feb 06, the price was still about 10c, but agreements with GSK, directors buying share, divestment of drug development pushed the price to 28c in April and August. Since Nov then the price has steadied around 20c. At the current price of 2.6 times NTA, it is on the low priced side.
All things considered here, and before the release of the 07 half year report, the Recommendation: Buy at 0.17c
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