Difficult23 Mar 2024 19:47
Now trading at a capitalisation of £3.99m with £2.8m cash. They should have sufficient cash to year end Sept 24, possibly Sept 25 if costs can be controlled, but, if things continue as they are, then I think there is fair chance they will have to raise. Given small numbers of directors, with 1 leaving this year, then the raise would have to be mainly institutionally backed. But I find it crazy that the shares are 93% down from their all time high. I am personally nearly 40% down on my small holding.
The director salaries of £634k in FY23 (up from £618k the year before) seem excessive given the state of the business. There has not been any staff cuts and it is hard to see where a genuine effort is being made to cut costs until business picks up.
Reassuringly, their pipeline is growing, but this is very much a metric that is given based on the opinion of management rather than totally objective. They promised in their FY23 that "IXICO is uniquely positioned to partner with innovative analytics organisations to provide a market channel to the global biopharmaceutical industry" and that they were "hopeful to announce our first significant partnership agreement early in 2024". I'm not aware of any such announcement being made yet. The departure of the CEO adds to IXICO's challenges this year, although saving £300k plus in salary may be useful... but it remains unclear if it is an attractive proposition for a quality candidate.
I think it might be useful to gain better insight into their historic pipeline numbers and how these converted into revenues. With revenues unlikely to pick up until FY26 at the earliest, the only indicators are pipeline. They will likely "grow" their pipeline to justify business operations (i.e. their salaries) and a future potential raise to keep the lights on. I still think this would make an attractive acquisition (costing only £1.2m to someone after taking out the cash) and I am still on the fence about adding to my holding or not - more likely to add on positive news around IXICO or around the clinical trial market (which seems to be very cyclical and currently entering/in the amidst of a downturn).
Very interested to hear the thoughts of others...