Bioventix (LON:BVXP)

20th Oct '20 by sharw

14 comments 1464 reads

Update 29/3/21 Interim results - https://www.londonstockexchang...

Highlights

· Revenue up 1.3% to £5.2 million (2019: £5.1 million)

· Profit before tax down 9% to £3.7 million (2019: £4.1 million)

· Closing cash balances up £0.3 million to £5.8 million

· First interim dividend up 20% to 43p per share (2019: 36p)

There is a report out from finnCap (free to those who register with them). They leave their forecasts and target price, suspended due to covid, "under review".

From past comments we know that one key to the future of this company is the success of the Troponin test. Today they say: "We remain optimistic about our troponin revenues and the success of these high sensitivity troponin products around the world and we look forward to reporting further progress in the second half of the year"

In the evening there was a half hour disxussion between Leon Boros and Peter Harrison (Bioventix CEO). If you watched it please add your comments.

Here is Paul's report:

"These figures are so simple, it’s a breeze to go through, and read all the commentary too, in about half an hour.

I can’t see anything untoward in the numbers, it looks completely clean.

Key points -

H1 revenues up 1.3% to £5.3m, so flat basically.

Profit before tax down 9% to £3.7m, although the drop from £4.1m in H1 LY is entirely due to an adverse forex movement, and a £70k increase in the share option charge to £138k - so I regard profits as also being flat against last year H1

Balance Sheet - is remarkable in that the business has almost no fixed assets, only £777k! It’s a know-how business.

Net cash of £5.8m is more than adequate. Surplus cash generated is paid out in divis now.

Cashflow statement - some working capital movements cause the cash generation to be a bit less than H1 LY. Only £120.6k capex, and nothing capitalised into intangibles. Very clean. Divis of £5.47m paid in H1, more than all the cash generated, meaning that the cash pile reduced from £8.1m to £5.9m - still plenty.

Valuation - Diluted EPS is 58.84p in H1. Finncap has an adj H1 EPS of 61.5p. They don’t have a full year forecast unfortunately, but if we simplistically double H1, then that implices about EPS 120p for the full year.

A share price of 4175p, means…

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doug2500

20th Oct '20

I did attend / watch mello last night (highly recommended BTW)

I wouldn't say I learnt much new, but did get the impression that things are going okay, and hopefully there is enough new stuff coming through to take up the slack.

As long as vit D sales hold up, if they shrink instead of just leveling off.........

ISAallowance

I watched the Mello presentation last night. There was a question fielded about how the 6 month reporting blocks for the royalties tie in with the financial year periods. The answer given was that royalties for Jan->June are reported to them in August, and almost immediately paid. At that point they convert to sterling, and issue an invoice for the royalty amount backdated to 30th June. Hence I assume from that that they are included in the FY results (he didn't explicitly state that, but he did explicitly state that the invoices were backdated to 30th June, so that is my inference).

Hence it appears to me that the peak of the first lockdown from March to May is reflected in these results, whereas previously I thought it might not have been. This makes this set of results very impressive IMHO.

If you're right, then you're equally right about it being very impressive.

The good thing is we can watch it again when they release the link.

Brilliant Leader

I am a long-term holder and likely to remain so but I note that Finncap have suspended forecasts for FY21 (while being positive on yesterday’s FY20 results). This is becoming a trend among a few of my small caps now and not particularly helpful. Ho Hum!

Cheers
Simon

Armorduck

I hold and am still very happy to do so. I wasn't an attendee of Mello.

In advance of the update I thought that BVXP may have had lower income because of the general reduction in routine clinical testing as individuals/hospitals focused on Covid responses. On the other hand vitamin D, which one of their major selling antibodies recognise, may be relevant to the Covid response.

I have not checked the timing of how any Covid effect might affect results. But overall I was very pleased to see income and profit increased.

BVXP seem to keep saying Vitamin D ab sales will fall, and they are the biggest component of income. So fingers crossed the upcoming troponin assay keeps accelerating its sales to compensate.

One small issue. The update refers more than once to " physical antibody". I wonder what alternatives exist? Metaphysical? Imaginary?....

I think the alternative is the royalty payments that make up the balance of their revenues.

JohnEustace

Yes I was thinking I need to watch that answer again! I think ISA Allowance has it right.

Correct. From memory Peter said that selling the actual antibody earns about 30% of the income and then roughly 70% is earned from royalties on tests actually performed in hospitals.
Bioventix ship antibodies to Siemens, Roche, etc who then use those antibodies to make test packs or cartridges that they ship to the laboratories in hospitals that carry out the actual tests on patient blood samples.

A bit about the work on pollution exposure testing that was in their update and covered in the Mello presentation.

They have identified a substance that is present in all forms of combustion that is ingested by people who are exposed to the smoke/fumes/particles and then produces measurable excretions in urine. They can detect and measure this using dip sticks similar to those used for drug testing or pregnancy testing. The concentrations are much lower than they find for example when testing for cannabis, but still well within the capability of their technology to detect. They have successfully measured people’s exposure to pollution in the Arctic Circle and in Farnham.

They envisage a phone camera based app to read the strips and give the results. The immediate applications would be in Health and Safety and public health monitoring.

I like that this would be a different market and set of customers for them. Being paid a healthy dividend from their existing income streams while they develop new technology like this is very attractive to me.

I think Peter said that Vitamin D tests were plateauing rather than falling. Then there’s an unknown balance between reduced volumes of general testing due to people avoiding hospitals and the increased awareness of Vitamin D deficiency in severe COVID 19 cases and the focus that may bring.

I think the trouble there is that Vitamin D is so cheap to produce you don’t get the big drug companies pushing or funding the trials or lobbying politicians so it’s more of a bottom up thing from the doctors and researchers. Anyway I’ll be taking my supplement until Spring.

sharw

29th Mar '21

Bioventix (LON:BVXP) interim results today. At Mello today at 6.30 pm Leon Boros interviews Peter Harrison from Bioventix. If you haven't got a ticket and hurry you might be in time to get a free one here (see first comment): https://www.stockopedia.com/content/mello-results-roadshowthis-monday-at-5pm-with-15-companies-787714/

30th Mar '21

Any comments on the Mello half hour with Leon Boris last night?

I thought it was good but the intro took took long leaving too little time for looking to the future. What I had noted that finnCap said about the possible expansion of troponin testing was confirmed but we were just about to get on to the pollution project (I was one of those asking for more details on that) when we ran out of time. A couple of people had requested a question about succession planning. This was not asked but the reason for the question became evident when Peter Harrison talked of his love for his sports car!

OldSchool05

The succession planning question was asked at a ShareSoc virtual call late last year. PH replied on the lines that enjoys working and wants to stay involved in the business as long as possible. He said that the Chairman and non-exec directors are both involved in UK and global biotech and that they would look to replace PH with 2 people (i.e. a scientific research person and a CEO with commercial focus).

Kevin Holloway

I must admit that I found PH very likeable but his lack of interest in the commercial side was very evident. I have however opened a small position in Bioventix (LON:BVXP) nonetheless

Bioventix (LON:BVXP)

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Sharw

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