Charles Jillings, CEO of Utilico, energized by strong economic momentum across Latin America. Watch the video here.
well, the bid is about to break 50p and this board has no traders trying to ramp it or zealots finding religion. In fact, there have been no posts today at all (until I've broken the duck - apols). There's a lot to like about the lack of hype.
below is a link to a big deal signed y'day by Shell with Air Liquide in the Far East. It's relevant because Shell is a partner of ITM's, as we know. In this case, they're going with Air Liquide. Some might recall that Air Liquide bought a stake in Hydrogenics, the Canadian competitor to ITM, just prior to Hydrogenics getting taken-out by a big US industrial. My point is that this tech is really taking off now, globally, and there really aren't that many players like ITM around for the big industrial gas players to back. All good...We will be supported all the way by both strategic investors from industry and financial investors like Allianz.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190911005807/en/Air-Liquide-Signs-New-Long-term-Contract-Supply
It’s all here in this excellent link posted by gameangler. This is an arbitrage / special situation investor’s wet-dream so lots of stuff won’t make short term sense. For instance, the Amryt stock will be shorted by those going long Novelion stock so they are hedged and their gain is near risk-free. As the seeking alpha article points out, there’s a near three-bag opportunity in Novelion stock in the US because it will own around 8% of Amryt post transaction.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4290742-novelions-8_1-percent-stake-amryt-worth-1_50-share?dr=1
I think it’s all to do with the chapter 11 bankruptcy agreement. The £1.48 price is about raising a specific amount of capital which satisfies the judge that the restructured assets, now part of Amryt, will have a good chance of returning as much value to the debt holders, who will now received equity in Amryt as part of the chapter 11, in which they wrote off hundreds of millions.
If they raised the equity at this current £1.15p price, the proceeds to the company would be reduced and the judge would be miffed and the new combined business less secure/ more fragile. The last thing the judge wants is to see is this business in his courtroom-ever.
very true! i did consider that! you could be right. the amount allianz has sold down is tiny....
I think the sheer number of trades, the volume and the price action in recent days suggests to me that a grown-up is trying to build a position. let's see....
gameangler even!
thanks, game-changer. the seeking alpha piece was very helpful. i note that a delay/adverse court decision was NOT one of the three risks identified by Taub, the author of the detailed seeking alpha note....hope he's right to dismiss the possibility. not many of us know the 'rules' around chapter 11 court hearings here in the UK....
given the share price strength, the slight reduction in the Allianz position indicates to me that another institution is desperate for stock and is building a position. My read is that the Allianz dealers have sold down a wee bit to facilitate because the market makers have gone around the houses, desperate to find stock. Having another institution on-board is a win-win for Allianz - increases the profile of ITM and liquidity, also means there's another deep pocket for any future fund-raising.
If they didn't sell, the new investor may have decided ITM was too illiquid to touch, which would have been a shame. All just ideal speculation of course, but i'd expect a TR-1 from a new institution before month-end. It's probably also worth mentioning that management may chose to raise a few million quid. That would NOT be an excuse for we PIs to sell. The stock would be placed with the new institution and others and would re-rate even higher in that scenario, in my view. ...
All good re newsflow, I agree.
Another really well-balanced RNS - good momentum in the short term via global distributors, tightly controlled costs, a great return on capital profile via the US production set-up - which can take sales up to $15mn with no further funding (and even then, only another 500k needed).
The CEO also reminds us that there's some great novel chemistry and new product potential lurking in the background. As the global green product revolution accelerates over the next few years, this portfolio of assets will start to acquire a real value.
As for the churn this morning, i think it reflects the fact that such a lot of stock was placed via the woodford clear-out in mid august. Some of the buyers would have been looking to sell into the higher liquidity of a results release day. It's all good. This is wood that needed to be chopped, so it might as well be today...
It's worth having a look at the half-year report from IP Group, released today. They're a major shareholder. The tone is very optimistic - particularly around Chronocort and Market Authorisation in Q4.
it's a quality problem to have, but i'm still worried this will go the way of Hydrogenics in Canada and be bought out on the cheap by one of the big guys. Hydrogenics went for 2x the very approx share price over the previous few months...If ITM were bid for, it that would imply something like 60p a share. Sure, better than a poke in the eye but I think most of us on this board think this stock is a multi-bagger over the next few years....
picking up on your point, CashFlow, the overhang pressure on the stock is probably the reason we've heard very little from the company. management told us that they'd let us know anything materially negative linked to the RP trial, and so far we've heard nothing. but equally, there has been no real incentive to release anything materially positive in any of Reneuron's programmes ahead of the Oct data release because any positive price momentum would be quickly overhauled by the Woodford sell programme.
IF i were management, I'd be waiting for the October data release. If the RP data holds up it should allow a book-build with institutional investors to clear the overhang in one 24hr period, and/or the Woodford position is bought by a pharma or large biotech with strategic ambitions. Either way, the balance of probabilities is that the stock will reset materially higher at some point in Oct and we could have other news from other programmes to quickly follow it.
agree with your points, Compound. I like the ETX / Novo tie-up but it's not yet commercial, as you well know.
This headline today from Fiercebiotech, a US daily widely read in the biotech community is a reminder of just how competitive things are out there...Schrodinger recently raised $100mn and their modelling capability sounds similar to C4X's..... I would love a technical evaluation of C4X vs Schrodinger if someone is clever-enough to manage it. I'm not up to it.
"AstraZeneca to adopt Schrödinger's molecule-modeling platform for drug discovery"
Worth looking at the ETX chart, I think. It has a very similar play-book to that at ITX, only difference is that the large Woodford block was cleared in late June not in mid August.
You can infer from the ETX chart that there's little downside from owning ITX here, although being caught on the spike of the initial post-Woodford rally wouldn't have been ideal. Another reason to buy and hold ITX rather than trade it over the next few months is that we're going to get operational newsflow thru Sept/Oct, so the take-off we've just seen at ETX will come at an earlier point for ITX holders and could be any day.
(there's no point releasing operational newsflow in july/august, as a rule - no-one is at their desks at the industry partners to sign-off the RNS wording, and there are few grown-up investors around to buy it). GLA.
I actually think the take-off at ETX might be more relevant for us. ETX is a recent collaborator with C4X (see past RNS); it's in the same drug discovery game. It has been dogged by the woodford overhang but that has now cleared and has finally caught a decent bid in the last couple of weeks. What's good for one UK micro-cap drug discovery name is probably good for this one, too.
If ETX's market cap keeps on going up, they'll be in a position to do a merger of equals with C4X - something I've wanted both parties to do for ages. There's a lot of complementarity/overlap and lots of scale efficiencies. Clive Dix would make a great chair of the combined entity and Ray Barlow a cracking CEO....
i'd love an RNS tomorrow, although someone is taking a mighty risk to front-run so blatantly. However, I think this headline, widely read by the US biotech community y'day, has more to do with it (see below).
I think US biotech investors have seen blocks of Woodford US listed and unlisted stock being cleared at very low prices. Now with Sterling on the floor and Reneuron's prospects looking great, they're starting to take a view on Rene stock (and potentially other UK-listed names, too).
Bodes well. We could do with some US grown-ups with lots of fire-power to help us to get somewhere near fair value and to tell the Reneuron story to others.
https://endpts.com/the-woodford-effect-teetering-on-the-edge-his-co-investors-are-feeling-the-pain-and-they-want-it-to-stop/
It’s worth following Fabian Picardo on Twitter. He enthusiastically supported this tweet, below, today and another on plastics earlier in the week. The Gib deal is really key to MWG as it bridges the revenue gap created by the disposal of Monitoring.
If Picardo is getting on the environmental waggon then that’s good for Gib and good for MWG....
I had thought the best option was to close membrane and back monitoring. However, this CEO, with skin in the game, clearly has deep conviction that the membrane IP is world class and will be adopted worldwide - eventually. If he’s right then MWG stock is an easy 20x. It really is that binary....
“Marine litter awareness @gib bathing pavilion. Beaches to follow ????#beatmarinepollution #wecare @GibraltarGov @cortes_john @FabianPicardo
Meanwhile, away from the share trading confusion, the operational news is quietly impressive. Take a read of this:
https://cosmeticsbusiness.com/news/article_page/Nouryon_launches_bio-based_polymer_for_weightless_hair_styling/156793
From the Nouryon twitter feed this morning:
#Didyouknow our readily biodegradable chelates are an essential ingredient when it comes to effectively removing the most stubborn stains while treading gently on the environment? Our #Dissolvine chelates can make a difference in everyday dishwashing.?? bit.ly/2YAhLfC
this is why I think there's a good recovery angle to this stock. the membrane-related companies are limited subsidiaries. So, even in a worse-case and there's no bid for assets (intellectual property, etc) out of administration (which I consider unlikely), I think the monitoring business with its £4mn of growing US$ sales is ring-fenced and supports a far higher valuation than the current one. I also think the Gib contract is ring-fenced, too. But let's see if that ever gets over the line. If Gib is cancelled, there will be considerable project costs that will be rebated to Modern Water.
"As a matter of English law, a parent entity (domestic or foreign) of a limited company cannot be held liable for the debts of that subsidiary upon its insolvency unless it has contractually agreed to accept such liability."
final point. the thing that keeps me here - and always will do so whilst he's involved - is Clive Dix. He's a world class biotech guy and he's made some spectacular exits in the past. as they say on the west coast - back the jockey, not the horse. good luck all.