Member Info for cadburyhill

ever since AZN ditched us, they've had nothing but failures across their respiratory programme. I can't recall one respiratory success of theirs....does make you wonder if they'll be back to partner on COPD..

A phase 2a trial of AstraZeneca’s AZD1419 has missed its primary endpoint. AstraZeneca moved the Dynavax-partnered TLR9 agonist into the trial in the belief it could improve time to loss of asthma control in patients with eosinophilic, moderate-to-severe forms of the disease.

nah! more likely a partial sell-down by invesco....there have been lots of management changes in various UK funds at Invesco and new managers quite often chuck-out legacy stuff they inherit. sometimes because they don't like it but more often because there's stuff they do want to buy and they need to sell kit to get the cash in to do so....
interesting to see if FERD have taken more stock....having a smart norgewgian family office keen to buy right up to 100p gives me a lot of confidence here. norwegians have faults but they know their fish....!

I've been here since 2016 so it has hurt. But i participated at 2p in decent size and that has helped average things out. to answer your question directly. yes, the original investment case still stands. I bought back then because i was convinced that global household and personal care companies (unilever, reckitts, J&J, l'oreal, etc) had under-invested in product technology over many years and the same was therefore true of the spec chemical companies that supplied them. the reasons for the under-investment are many but perhaps the most significant was that since the financial crisis these companies had been rewarded handsomely because of the quality/stability of their earnings.
Therefore senior managements spent more time on balance sheet manipulation to give earnings growth/stability rather than taking risk with product innovation and they were very well rewarded for that (look at buy-backs, debt issuance, etc. in this sector).
At some point, innovation, spurred by sustainability needs, was going to kick in and ITX was a very clever niche provider of solutions that these companies would need. Of course, ITX Investors and management believed it would happen more quickly than it has and we've paid the price for it. Even the demerger at Akzo Nobel last year was unfortunate for ITX, so there was a bit of bad luck in the mix, too.
however, we're here, now, and i'm comfortable that this new management team are very focused and very well incentivised to get things right. I'm happy to sit here for your three years and see where the share price is at....

agreed. great thread. I think the point that non-holders haven't yet appreciated is that once your product enters into a complex supply-chain in this household and personal care space it really doesn't come out of it for decades - and I mean decades.
if something is working and its reliable and it's not harming brand, etc then it stays because the big household product names are so risk averse. Now, every few decades there will be a reason to force change in formulation. In this instance, it's because of phosphates and sustainability agendas. You can attach a high multiple to the earnings that build on any of these ITX agreements because they're so sticky and will endure for so long. If/when the Nouryon is announced, I think it completely de-risks ITX and is highly significant. I think the move from 2p to 5p is about this business avoiding going bust; i think the value of these deals in terms of future cashflow hasn't started to be discounted into share price yet.

The reason why we're down here at 4/5p from 50/60/70p is because the whole process of adoption has taken several years longer than anybody thought and they simply ran out of cash. The comfort that I take from that saga is that this represents such a significant barrier to entry for others that they won't try. Final point: Asia hasn't even started to switch to phosphate-free product yet. Good luck all!

I used to be a stockbroker. I’ve seen the movie before!
Am hoping for more newsflow v soon ( I actually quite like the idea of a merger with C4X, too. But am getting carried away, I suspect).

yes, interesting...it could be griffiths..a couple of big trades have gone thru in another of his names, Synairgen...
Today, there appears to be some general deck-chair shuffling going on in the UK innovation space. Note that IP Group is having its best day for months today after two big clear-out? trades early this morning.
As you say, anything to clear an overhang is good. The bull in me would argue that ETX will have held back good news until they get the overhang cleared because otherwise any spike in share price would be sold into aggressively. So, if this has cleared the decks, the company is now more likely to be on the front-foot with newsflow.

The economist article couple with the Air Liquide news gives us some of the best macro news we’ve seen in ages. We really do seem to have turned the corner in terms of the pace of technology adoption and thought- leadership. Take a look at the Air Liquide share chart over the last thirty years. Those guys just don’t make big mistakes.
I’m genuinely surprised / confused that ITM is still in the ‘20’s today.
I’m going to stay in this stock for years so don’t need to make short term predictions but I will make one - that a Santa rally will take this over 40p by mid Jan....i think ITM is irresistible to an institutional investor here and expect a new name to start building a position.

Fair. It’s been a long hard road for all of us....

Johntay, you seem to be overlooking the fact that the allergy market is a very large and very valuable one, serving a real need in many suffers, including those with life-threatening anaphylactic risk (AGY have a promising earlier stage peanut programme, by the way).
sure, the placebo affect is tricky here and in other therapeutic areas but that doesn't stop scientists from trying to design trials that prove efficacy and it doesn't stop investors from potentially making an excellent return. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned Circassia. There's a lot of differences between a cat allergy and a pollen trial, a lot of lessons recently learned and, and this is my key point, a LOT in the price down here already.

You say you're now 'out'. I'll take a decent-sized wager that you were never 'in'. identify your sell trade today and maybe I'll believe you!

I'm actually quite happy to pick more of this up - and just have at 14.2. This stock is practically on 1x £65mn-odd of sales. It's incredibly cheap vs global allergy peers and in a different league compared to the usual pre-revenue stuff on AIM...If you chuck in Brexit and the Birch trial delay then I think you have the recipe for a very miss-priced stock. Yes, the trial delay is a pain but it's better to have a delayed trial than one that's rushed/flawed. In any trial for allergy you're up against a placebo affect which needs to be carefully benchmarked. Look at what happened to Circassia when they tried in Cat. After the trial data release Circassia came up with factors like altitude, location, seasonality but it was too late, the damage had been done and the trial results filed.
The contract research guys carrying out this Birch trial for Allergy have clearly learned a lot from trial failures elsewhere and want to give the trial the best chance of success. Also, note that a carefully constructed trial protocol and analysis is EXACTLY what the FDA will want to see when it considers the next big money stage for Allergy - Phase 3 in the US.

you won't get any RNS news today or on monday, in my view. nowadays, this is effectively an american company and it's Thanksgiving. the yanks are giving themselves a rare long-weekend holiday.
have to say that the sustained buying today has surprised me. suggests that there's appetite for stock from a grown-up and not just the pump&dump brigade. good luck, all.

Not sure whether Synairgen will put out their own RNS ot no....I guess they should do,

Arix Bioscience plc ("Arix") (LSE: ARIX), a global healthcare and life science company supporting medical innovation, is pleased to note that Pharmaxis Ltd (ASX: PXS), an Australian pharmaceutical research company focused on inflammation and fibrosis, has announced positive results from the Phase 1 clinical trial for the second of its Lysyl Oxidase Like 2 (LOXL2) inhibitor compounds being developed to treat fibrotic diseases such as Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH) and Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF).

Arix led the A$24 million (£13.4 million) financing for Pharmaxis in August, acquiring an 11.1% equity stake. Arix’s Ed Rayner joined the Pharmaxis Board of Directors in September 2018.

The announcement can be accessed on Pharmaxis’ website at http://www.pharmaxis.com.au/investor-centre/news/ and full text of the announcement from Pharmaxis is contained below.

Pharmaxis will host an investor research briefing on Tuesday, 20 November from 10am to 12.00pm (AEDT). The event will provide an overview of the Pharmaxis drug discovery pipeline including the anti-inflammatory drug currently being developed by Boehringer Ingelheim, work in collaboration with the Garvan Institute of Medical Research on an anti-fibrotic LOX inhibitor targeting pancreatic cancer and the anti-fibrotic LOXL2 inhibitor program currently completing phase 1 trials and extended toxicity studies.

This is a unique opportunity to hear directly from the Pharmaxis executive research team along with the perspectives of a committed pharmaceutical partner and a leading medical research institute. A live webcast will be accessible to all investors via the homepage of the Pharmaxis website at www.pharmaxis.com.au and will be available for replay after the event.

Fred, thanks. but relevance of the article to Rene is...?

Think it’s mainly macro - investors looking for decent quality ftse250 laggards for a Q4 which normally looks after smaller caps and will do so in spades if we get a framework agreement on Brexit.
There has been a big seller in recent months which has hurt this chart. Encouragingly, a fair amount of stock has changed hands in the last few days. IF this indicates that the seller is finally done then IPO is going to move back towards the mid140’s very quickly in my view...my fair value is around 170-180p

It’s most likely just punters ‘selling the winners’ to lock-in gains....there’s some panic and a bear market feel to things in various corners of AIM at the moment; selling out performers is classic investor behaviour under duress...
i think selling in Ceres will be bitterly regretted but can’t blame people for trying to grab a profit....

from today's Fiercebiotech.
"After having invested in Morphic Therapeutic’s A and B rounds, AbbVie is pulling the trigger on an R&D deal. The drugmaker is ponying up $100 million for the option to exclusively license multiple programs from Morphic that target fibrotic diseases.

Morphic’s pipeline consists of oral integrin inhibitors—integrin being a cell surface receptor found on most cells. Integrin signaling is involved in many cellular functions and abnormal signaling has been implicated in fibrosis, autoimmune diseases and immuno-oncology.

Under the agreement, Morphic will carry out R&D work on its fibrosis drugs through IND-enabling studies. At that point, AbbVie will be able to decide for each compound whether it will pay a license fee and then pick up responsibility for the global development and commercialization of the drug. Morphic could also bag clinical and commercial milestone payments and royalties for each drug that AbbVie takes forward.

Morphic also retains the option to share development costs with AbbVie on liver fibrosis indications, in exchange for “enhanced royalties.”

“Those liver markets are big,” said Morphic CEO Praveen Tipirneni, M.D. “With NASH, cirrhotic liver and so on ... we obviously had to have something pretty special to negotiate those kinds of rights.”

I’m impressed with the management here. Clearly the trial data was a disappointment. But having the data from the roll-over patients from the Phase 2 trial has been incredibly useful / powerful. This is a chronic treatment. People will be taking these products for a lifetime. There’s not one biotech of any size which has not had a trial setback in its time. I think this will be seen as a minor blip in time. At least holders know the management are doing all they can in a calm, measured way, which is bound to impress the regulators.

Yes. The market maker knew it was good news. He/she collapsed the bid y’day afternoon to try and gather some scraps of stock to facilitate the buys we are now seeing....still, am surprised not to have seen an RNS this morn, not that we necessarily need it...

Agreed....can only be matter of time till we see the formal release on this news.
i also completely agree with Rich. This is such a valuable therapeutic target area that the numbers could really surprise.

Final point: think we haven't see the last of Astra in respiratory...They've had set-backs in the alternative paths they chose over SNG001 a couple of years back. They know the quality of the output from this team..

No cure for our boredom but limited risk of dilution....
any position here is option money as we wait for deal news. My sense is that these guys want to get themselves in good-enough nick to be taken-out.
I still back Barlow as being cleverer and better connected than the average bear. I will give him another six months and see what news he can generate....