Member Info for IntraVnus

One of the problems here is that the value in contract manufacturing is submerged in the costs of research and development so the bottom line always looks anaemic. Last year has seen a marked reduction of group losses but, within that, is a solid CM business, surrounded by a possible gold mine of highly developed R&D.

Turnover of £5M+ and gross margins in the 75-80% range in CM should be commanding a valuation by itself of £20M or more. If a bigger business were to buy out that part of the group, they could make big savings if they already have a similar business and are buying in a strong profit centre with top rate customers.

As it is, this value is subsumed and thus we have our entire group valued at £8M. That includes, apart from the £20M CM division, an embedded pool of IP which includes a potential advance in materials for heart valves (a future need in an industry that uses legacy technology that could be endangered by animal disease in the cow herds it relies on).

Merry Christmas to all who sail in this ship!

In a bullish market scenario, this story would turbo charge the share price. As it is, we are at maximum sentiment negativity levels.

Some keen buying on the close. I am tired of seeing speculative buying so I would like to hope these are not similar trade punts. I’ll keep an open mind here. Not sure why there should be a splurge on a shortened Xmas eve trading day but who knows. One day, the narrow trade range will be breached upward!

The market has had nearly 400k of shares on offer for the last two days. Today maybe soaked up half of that, especially a £15k purchase toward the close. The spread of 11.5 - 13 is almost irrelevant as the real spreads are much narrower.

The shareholder base is packed with stale bulls and older legacy guys. For one reason or another, likely associated with impatience, infirmity or mortality, the supply keeps coming. The company needs to get a couple of key deals over the line to break the impasse and encourage a new generation to invest. It’s most certainly a patient waiting game.

The real spread for small sizes is 11.81 - 12.59. They tend to be algorithmically set with the published quotes a bit of a nonsense although Level 2 does give me some idea of where things are moving in the short term. One MM moved up a touch after the last 10k trade.

Langland, that was my thinking (with optimist hat on). The directors would get the lawyers doubly to make sure options are valid before any triggering event happens.

It will also be the case, as greeneyes says, that the audit is ongoing currently. I’m not sure if the finer points of an existing EMI scheme would be high on any audit checklist though.

Good spot Langland. Hopefully all these findings are being shared (via NDA?) with interested parties from the industry.

I agree, greeneyes, the implication is that they received around £170k from the initial trials with these presumably big players. Remember they also started off with a £400k initial trial contract with the major that took them on last January. That had extended to £700k before the signing of the £3.3M 5 year deal.

They finish with:

Key Investment Points:

- Opportunistic niche acquisition increases manufacturing capacity

- Turned EBITDA Positive

- Increasing Biomaterials Royalties with Scalable IP

- Contract Manufacturing can have 10-20 year product life cycles

- Cash available for growth

A new research note is out today from Hybridan. The most relevant excerpts for me are:

"Medical device manufacturing is relatively complex and is driven by strict regulatory considerations. This barrier to entry is compensated for by attractive margins and long-term supply contracts reflecting the long medical product life cycles. There are two FDA registered facilities and four clean rooms in Ayrshire, Scotland. RUA is an expert in the development and introduction of processes that validate demonstrable quality control methodologies. ABISS is being integrated to provide additional sub and contract manufacturing. There is a growing pipeline of medical device customers going through regulatory approval which could lead to multi-year, multi-million-pound contracts."

"RUA owns the IP to Elast-Eon which is a clinically proven polymer technology and accepted as the most biostable of all implant suitable polyurethane materials. The IP is licensed to medical companies for royalty payments and is also used by RUA in manufacturing. The material is used in long term implantation of a growing list of devices, such as stents, catheters and pacemakers etc. Elast-Eon is enabling the next generation of cardiovascular medical devices; the market is projected to grow to $115bn by 2030 from £60bn in 2024. There are currently Biomaterial development projects opportunities underway. One such combines textiles expertise with Elast-Eon to create a novel heart valve leaflet material. These innovative CDMO contracts take time to move to revenue, and RUA considers it is counter-productive to provide the market with guidance on the progress of contract negotiations."

We are told in the MIFID-inspired footnotes that these notes should not be treated as independent research but as marketing tools. That's fine then as it implies the company has had an input into the contents. There are a few juicy hints in those paragraphs so I hope some of these projects reach the signing stage!

As I mentioned yesterday, the MM's were bidding big at 12.21. Trade printed tonight shows someone did sell 250k into that bid at 12.21 at 10.43am yesterday which probably explains the rest of the day being weak. Despite that, today was strong. MM's were still bidding up to 150k at 12.84 late on today, 250k at 12.56.

They were offering to sell to buyers at 13.32 for 50k and 13.47 for 100k.

With 500k being bid this morning, perhaps we will see another delayed big trade printed tomorrow?

The interesting thing for me is that earlier this morning, I could have sold 500k online at 12.21p. Yesterday, 275k was bid at 12.85p and higher amounts at 12.62p.

Sum total is I don’t know what this means in general since the bid disappeared this afternoon after a couple of small sales. I guess the MM’s get out of the way to let the panic sellers have reduced prices!

The other side of that 500k trade shows up, timestamped 16.41 yesterday at 13p.

Earlier in the day, the mms were bidding up to 275k at 12.85p. Post end of day, a 500k trade appeared at 12.75p. I don’t know how these late prints are worked out but they always seem to be at mid price on the close. Either our overhang merchant has shifted more out or a buyer has shown their hand, I couldn’t say. There were a few 100k disposals earlier but there has been some widespread buying too.

Either way, we’ve had two days now of high volume accompanied by a price rise which bodes well, I think.

It’s a stable business and clearly the management are endeavouring to get new business over the line, with every contract governed by stiff regulation. Once they have a contract, it tends to be long term and profitable as medtech devices cannot just be switched around in a supply chain.

Looking at these numbers, the last 6 months has seen £1.3M revenue added to the UK contract manufacturing (was £2.2M for the previous 12 months, so growth continued).

Abiss, as flagged last time due to customer destocking, had a reduced rate of turnover, £900k compared to £1,300k in the 7 month period to 31/3/25 since acquisition at start of Sep 24.

The legacy royalty business was steady as usual with a rate of around £300k every 6 months.

For me this is overall steady and stable, awaiting new business contracts to be sealed and delivered.

I don’t expect fireworks in the share price. We need new contracts to be sealed for that to happen but the consolation is that cash is still well managed.

It was a false flag. Winterflood opened at 12p bid but dropped it to 11p at 8.10am. Current buy price is 11.925 which is below mid price. Back to your bunks everyone!

Just for accuracy, the 11p trade of 250k was time stamped from yesterday when general quote was 10.80-11.50.

In many ways, I’m not too bothered whether they are buts or sells. The main positive is overall heavy volume accompanied by a rising price. We now will see if there’s any follow through next week to keep the momentum moving upwards. There have been a lot of false starts in the last year or more!

Your post seems to have inspired a few 50k and 25k purchases, greeneyes. That is one view :)

RUA’s website has updated the large shareholder list to 30 Sept 25 from 30 June 2025. Most of the biggies are share platforms like AJBell, Hargreaves and Interactive.

The list shows that in the last three months, a combined net 2 million shares were sold through AJ Bell and Hargreaves Lansdowne alone. Clearly a lot of punters have lost their patience or are desperate for a gamble elsewhere in crypto or gold miners?

Rua is a long term investors’ share so the likes of Clive Titcomb (added another 148k) and Mark Bradshaw are sticking with it. As am I and others I know.

There are (or were) probably a combined 10% of RUA posting on this thread in the recent year or two. Yet, so many of them seem to have ceased posting here so it is likely that some of them are in the net 2M of sales mentioned.

Shareholders come and go in today’s instant stimulation world so it is down to management to keep this ship in good shape as it navigates its challenges and opportunities. I wish them well and hope they get some deals over the line.

Given the messages at the interims of RUA only announcing something once signed and not encouraging speculation about prospective business and that lead times are long due to regulatory hurdles, etc, I guess the silence isn’t altogether a surprise.

I would speculate that the heart valve area is tied up in NDA knots. We can but hope that something good will eventually be sprung on us from that area!

I feel there must have been some motive behind the measures mentioned (in my first paragraph), perhaps enabling parties to work on deals with no interruptions, but it’s very hard for us as shareholders to get a handle on things.