ABC: Significant number of directors buying recently and increase in fund holding

28th Apr '14 by DJLJ23

7 comments 10203 reads

It will be intresting to see what the new (insider view) makes of Abcam (LON:ABC)

over last few months, 4 directors at between £30K & £50K each
Milners wife (Gounari) £1M+
Milner 600k of share optiions
WASATCH increased holdings with 3 purchases of 2.2M, 2.4M, 2.5M shares
Blackrock have reduced to less than 5%
So i'm guessing that they might still be reducing holding

The WASATCH site, views abc as amazon of medical world, with their on line website linking medical establishments to suppliers. They typically look for companies with growth rates of 15%+ PA.

For me a buy, As all ways just a personal view, DYOR
Davi

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About the Author

DJLJ23

Premium Member

Southerner living in the North, trained as metallurgist, background in IT, business cases and project management.

7 comments

shipoffrogs

28th Apr '14

Hi DJLJ

after the recent share price fall I had a close look at this - it suddenly seemed a great company at a reasonable price.

The director buying has then been quite persuasive and Wasatech seem quite a clued in II. If historic growth rates look like returning it should move back up.

Downside - it seems they are operating in a more competitive environment.
Big downside - a future breakthrough makes antibodies a redundancy in protein research.

DJLJ23

28th Apr '14

Thanks for the input.
While a breakthrough might make antibodies redundant, i doubt if it would do it quickly. Did your research reveal anything on the horizon?

shipoffrogs

28th Apr '14

No - I think I picked it up in their list of risks and it would obviously finish the business off. But didn't see anything specific, although obviously it's a field where there's lots of new developments.

I think the increased competition is more of a real risk - they seem to have broken new ground with the "Amazon" model and others are following. But they'll have some first mover advantage, an extensive database and repeat customers which should all provide some downside protection.

snickers

28th Apr '14

I had a look as well: but they still looked expensive even after the price drop.
In a 2010 video the boss was hoping imminently to overhaul a rival SantaCruz: but according to the Alexa website statistics site:
santacruz: 274k visits per month, 4 pages per visitor
abcam.com: 215k visits per month, 2.8 pages per visitor
..so that didn't happen. Santacruz possibly have an animal welfare issue: there's a court case in July.
But both firms are well short of Sigma-Aldrich in the web rankings.

There was a customer-satisfaction survey in 2012..

	used them?	5 star	4 star	3 star	2 or 1
sigma-aldrich	57%	-	-	-	-
santa-cruz	53%	-	-	-	-
abcam	51%	22	51	22	5	..worst of these.
bdBiosciences	43%	30	53	14	3
CellSignalling	38%	42	45	11	2	..best
R&D systems	36%	33	47	20	0
Dako	16%	35	51	14	0

The surveyees said that 'specificity' was #1 criterion for choosing a supplier, which I took to mean that researchers are over a barrel.

The three most popularly used suppliers of research antibodies were Sigma-Aldrich, Santa Cruz Biotechnology, and Abcam. Interestingly, less-used suppliers such as Cell Signaling Technology, BioLegend, and eBioscience were the three most highly-rated companies. Specifically, Abcam falls within the top 15 of customer-rated antibody suppliers, but Santa Cruz Biotechnology and Sigma-Aldrich receive much lower positive ratings..

..so customer service is inversely proportional to company size, but Abcam are somewhat better than the norm.
The vulnerability for Abcam is perhaps to reduced research support from governments.. And at number 2 or 3 among its peers, how much growth is possible?

Cheers.

apad

29th Apr '14

Sales figures can be monitored on the Website. Currently 130,000/period (120,000 last month), following a pause at 110,000.
The model has a combination of their own antibodies and others on license.
Currently increased spending on staff for customer support - 32 vacancies.
China office expenditure.
Doubled my holding on the drop.
apad

DJLJ23

29th Apr '14

Many thanks for your input, i'll dig into some of those

DJLJ23

29th Apr '14

apad, thanks for the info, are you able to post a link to the website page?, as i'm struggling to find it
david

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ABC: Significant number of directors buying recently and increase in fund holding

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DJLJ23

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