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Another dilution, almost 3%.
"To be held by the Company's Employee Benefit Trust ("EBT") and will be used to satisfy LTIP awards."
Anyone know what's going on today? Look at those mega buys
" I foresee it dramatically increasing the number of patients able to benefit from this advanced energy, not only here in Nottingham but at healthcare settings elsewhere across Europe"
That's the doctors prognosis. But why just Europe? It's surely significant that this successful application happened almost immediately after approval. It's effectively opening the gate on a new revenue stream. The market seems more than ready for these products. The training process is in place too. Seems like it is all coming together at last. This should logically translate into increasing revenue and a SP run up to the next trading update.
@GracieP. Thank you for the information in your post and good luck with your other investments should you not dip your toe in the Creo water :).
Another good news RNS and as I've mentioned I really hope from a humane perspectives that the products continue to give good outcomes to those that require this surgery. From a business perspective I'm slightly concerned that no matter how good the product are the training barriers involved may continue to slow the path to profit. Lets hope once those trained are passing the knowledge on others things start to cascade in a positive way. Very interesting potted history Theorist, lets hope some lessons have been learnt!.
interesting post gp. i have followed creo for more than a decade and i have no doubts at all about the product and the technology. chris han**** is genuinely a genius. the trouble has been that you cannot just put the product on a shop shelf, you have to get consultants on board literally one at a time and offer training as part of the sales package. this is very labour intensive and time consuming. which is also why so much interest is being shown in the relationship with intuitive, where bulk sales could be made and the training problem largely falls away. i think the company made mistakes, it’s headcount is way too high, the acquisitions have been a distraction not an asset. there have been some governance issues too. a non executive director was recruited, placed almost immediately on the directors’ remuneration committee and within six months approved massive cash bonuses for two directors, ostensibly on the grounds that the acquisitions had been such a success and despite the onset of the pandemic. pretty daft in my mind, plus any bonus should have been in shares not cash, with the cash reserved exclusively for its original purposes, product development and working capital. so there have been some bumps in the road, covid very unfortunate when you need access to consultants and hospitals, excessive recruitment (imo) and until recently no sign of a clear sales strategy. having said all that i remain very confident they will prevail and recover the lost ground.
Unexpected share issues are the bane of AIM stocks and it is surprising how often you don't see them coming. Its a fact of life that share issues on AIM are seen as a cash machine to get a company to profitability. As long as that profitability arrives its not quite so bad but its hard to judge the odds of this as most RNS are full of smoke and mirrors unfortunately. Whilst it would be rather wonderful if Intuitive or anyone else showed interest its unlikely in my personal opinions. Unless the technology is fantastic its cheaper for any interested party to wait and see if the company fails to secure enough funding to win the race and pick up the pieces out of administration where the debts are written off. Should the company win the race to profitability the picture is changed considerably.
BBD, yes good point, would be useful to get a measurement of the CREO applications, say as a percentage of robotic surgery. Appointment good too, I think what we need to see now is the promised reduction in headcount and a lot more detail re the sales strategy. With almost 300 staff how many are engaged in sales, how are they going to build and accelerate the training programme, it all seems agonisingly slow at the moment. The company has assured the market that the latest raise will be the last needed, it looks pretty marginal to me.
That estimated global revenues number is not definitive, Theorist, some estimates are lower, but Intuitive are certainly dominant. It's worth noting that the robot market includes all areas of the body, whereas CREOs tools are targeted at specific, but important, areas. Looks like a good appointment today, another sign of ambition and progress
BBD. The data I have showed that in Q1 2023 Intuitive revenues were up 14% and combined rivals down 6%, which was how I got to my 90% figure, however you may well be right. I 100% agree with your post, I do sometimes worry that if the Creo suite of products is as good as we are led to believe then why wouldn’t Intuitive snap it up, if for no reason other than to shut competitors out of this avenue?
Intuitive reported revenue of $6.431B last year. Estimated global market for surgical robots was $8.5B. That works out at 75.7% share of total revenue - extremely impressive, although substantially less than "over 90%" in terms of revenue.
If they are interested in taking over CREO, they have shown no sign of it so far - not participating in the fundraising, for example - but it should be noted that they are really just evaluating the usage of CREOs tools at the moment, if they like them for any specific application then the uptake could be swift and dramatic. Also, although huge, they are not the only big player in this area, and there is at least one smaller, nimbler rival who also have a contract with CREO, which could lead to big European sales. On top of that, the global market is predicted to more than double over the next four years.
Some good reasons to be positive on this stock, with the usual cautions and awareness of recent CREO history and disappointments.
We know that Creo is partnered with Intuitive, which has sewn up over 90% of the world surgical robotics market. Intuitive has a market cap of $115 billion and trades on a P/E ratio of around 100. Incredible numbers. It would seem that the Creo suite of instruments offers Intuitive genuine and real advantages, certainly this is what Creo itself is saying. That being the case it would be no surprise if Intuitive took out Creo, particularly given the opportunity to do so at maybe half Creo’s peak valuation. Or looking at it another way it is almost a concern that they haven’t!
Agreed, really frustrating. I thought I had a bargain when I bought and have had to heavily average down. Hoping now that we should be funded to profitability, with the amount of news to potentially drop (eg fda approval for spydrblade should be due this year- according to a proactive video) & hopefully some positive numbers on adoption we can get back to where we should be (and i can have shares back in profit).
Long term holders have been shafted by misjudgement, of course. If they had fundraised when it was obviously needed, then the long SP decline and heavy dilution could have been substantially reduced. The fundraising issue was highlighted on this board long before it destroyed 90% of shareholder value: if we could see it, why couldn't the people who are paid to?
That's brilliant both of you many thanks!. Just gives me a bit of context as to how things might go (all things being well of course) just to get back to where the MCAP was historically. I bought in around the 30p mark so no champagne corks yet but maybe the odd beer or two on the back of things so far :).
Hi 1eyedman
Before the fundraising in Feb, there were 180 million shares in issue, so at £2.20 the MCAP would have been approx £396m. That seems to demonstrate the potential for this to go much higher if the revenue numbers are pleasing.
Those who bought at 20p got an absolute steal!
Don't know the highest market cap so far, but they released an rns 30th April 2021, number of shares in issue at that date were 157, 940, 390, share price was 1. 9863, so market cap of around 313.7m
The crowd go wild!. Or are quietly county their cash. I wonder can any of the long term holders tell me very roughly what the MCAP of the company was back in (say) March '22 when the share price was around £2.20?. Whilst its easy enough to look up a historical share price the issuing of shares on AIM stocks mean historical MCAPS are more difficult to work out. A best guess ballpark would be fine or even a best (educated) guess at the highest ever MCAP so far?.
Cheers
MCAP is only £88.6M, so it's a confident punt, if you'll pardon my language.
Presumably institutional: Cannacord or M&G maybe?
Over £1m bought in two chunks today, and a string of other decent buys make it look as if something's afoot here.
David. With respect to time scale. No idea in all honesty,I would guess months rather than weeks or years. The NICE website does mention 39weeks for technological appraisal process. Seems an odd number and is probably an average. The outcome is obviously very important either way. Good luck with your investment!.
Recently dipped toe in with 20k shares. There is a lot happening including the latest RNS on NICE review. How long does this kind of review take - any ideas?