Future Medical: FUM .....your thoughts gratefully received

12th Jun '18 by DavidRoss

14 comments 4445 reads

Dear all
I’m a very new subscriber to Stockopedia and I’m amazed by the depth and breadth of knowledge and information available by the algorithms and individual contributors.

I have a couple of holdings that I’m curious about people’s thoughts on one of them, please be gentle with me as I’m not in any way a sophisticated investor rather a new starter.
Anyway, FUM based in Guildford trading on the AIM market engaged in the sexual and pain relief market with one product CSD500 an erectile dysfunction condom which has been launched in a number of territories across Europe and the Middle East and MED2002 which is a topical pain relief gel, where I see the positioning for it is a direct challenge e to Voltarol (in the UK)

The algorithms in Stockopedia aren’t that impressed from what I can see but I would be grateful for your thoughts on the stock.

Many thanks and please be gentle.....

Kind regards

David

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Carey Blunt

12th Jun '18

Welcome to Stockopedia David. How new are you to investing? The reason I ask is that we don't end up patronizing you with our answers. You mention you are a new starter but it would be good to know more.

I've not looked at the company before but it looks like a "Jam Tomorrow" stock. It could end up paying off and paying off big time but you have to know that the odds are heavily against you. Almost all stocks of this type don't make it so you are betting on an outsider and that's what the stocko algorithms are telling you.

It makes heavy losses and has debt and so will likely need to raise funds just to survive. This will dilute your holding and drag the share price lower. If it can't find the funding then maybe it goes out of business.

Its also not a very large market cap so may be illiquid. You may not be able to get out if it starts to go wrong and so you are carrying a lot of risk.

My view would be.....sell it and keep an eye on it. If it suddenly does become the next big thing then you can buy in again then. Maybe you miss out on the initial movement of the price upwards and so miss out on some of the gain if it does well but you are risking the small possibility of missing out on some of the upwards movement against the highly likely possibility of a ongoing or quick downwards movement.

Good luck, keep asking the questions. Investing is a team sport!

GrahamF

Progress at the company is very slow. That’s partly the nature of the regulatory system but also management don’t seem to be in a hurry. So, not only a risk that the products do not pass the necessary regulatory hurdles but even if they do you might be a very long time waiting for that. Better in my view to deliberately miss out on the riskier part of the growth here and wait until the picture is more certain.

hayashi22

I would avoid this company. It has delivered nothing for shareholders and seems to be a lifestyle vehicle for management. It could of course multibag if it achieves its aims but to date the record is poor.

DavidRoss

HI Carey, many thanks for your reply and insightful comments on this one, I’ve been investing for about 7 years but always up to now in investment trusts but thought I would try my hand at individual stocks. My investing style is very much under development, I have a mix of large mid and small cap, giving me a mid cap value/growth bias via stockopedias assessment. My goal is minimum churn and keep fees down to an absolute minimum.

HI Graham
Many thanks for your reply on FUM, you’ve highlighted something I hadn’t thought of and that’s the speed of management in bringing their products to market.

Cheers David

HI hayashi22
Many thanks for your reply and comments on this one, being new to individual stock investing I hadn’t realised the danger of a stock being used as a lifestyle vehicle for management. It’s a very interesting view and question to ask the management directly

13th Jun '18

You can read the AGM statement which has been published ahead of the meeting. Rather confirms my view.

MiserableJacktPotato

As a younger man, one of my fears at the end of a night of disco was the effect of fizzy pop on my bedroom routine. FUM have a product that all but makes this a thing of the past, it has been commercially available for years, they had reasonable demand in Holland and Belgium and should be at least making some cash to cover research costs.
Yet the management have completely failed to deliver any value from this market disrupting technology imo, forever promising this mythical unicorn is going to buy it (and other products) for "punchy numbers".
Avoid.

15th Jun '18

Hi Hayashi, Indeed, I`m looking at this holding in different light now, many thanks for your thoughts

Hi, Many thanks for your thoughts on this holding, I was holding on to it in the hope that it might eventually come good but after all your thoughts, I`m certainly reevaluating my position here.
It is a surprise to me that they haven`t been able to deliver any value thus far from their portfolio of products, I wonder if they`re looking to sell to a larger Pharmco ?

Cheers

David

DavidRogers

16th Sep '19

Hi David

I have held this stock over the last 10 years off and on.

It has been very slow bringing its products to market, although this time it seems to have a higher chance than most other times. The latest rise in price and momentum can be partly contributed to Simon Thomson of investor chronicle recommending the share this year on a number of occasions, he seems to have a dedicated following of investors. I believe it is still overbought at the moment and a fair price on anticipation would be sub 25. I do believe it will hit highs of 80 to £1 if the news in December is positive, and it will try to bring its product to market regardless of the results, based on past positive trials.

But a point to note is that this is a highly speculative share that you should be willing to accept total loss on.

It is burning cash and will need funding shortly which will dilute the price. If you still hold the shares you may want to hold for the 3 months until the latest trial results are announced.

Hope this has helped, I do not usually comment but have held this share for years and wanted to give a general not technical view on it.

Regards

David

redpanda

30th May '20

Stockopedia may be correct in its academic low opinion of this company and being brand new here, I am left wondering how much human research go into Stockopedia's findings. I think it deserves deeper research for the upside of this company may be HUGE. Do S. staff ever meet the management of companies? I don't know because I'm new here. I only joined yesterday so I am quite ignorant how S. runs.

For example, the bankruptcy risk on FUM, looks terrible on this site but FUM has the money to take it well into next year when, all things being equal - it should be on the way to stardom. I say 'should be' but we shareholders have been let down by the management before and they've really annoyed many of us, but this time, if you watch the videos and results, it seems more compelling.

I also see that nobody has posted any comments on this company on S. since 2018. I have held FUM for well over 10 years. The management seem to have been the problem and though most of them are still in situ, they, by accident, (I'd like to say in a gripe, because they have made mistakes and annoyed us shareholders so much before,) have stumbled upon what seems to be an effective remedy that could and should send Viagra and Cialis into the background and theoretically take the number one position for ED. While holding this stock I have had multiple anti-climaxes - (excuse me!) - and it's not funny watching my investment sink and remain far below what I paid for it where it has been for almost a decade and remains, though it is now beginning to climb and for good reason, I think. At last I am now optimistic and have recently added to my holding by a 5 figure sum. As the compound gel has a very good safety record and is taken topically, unlike Viagra and Cialis which are pills and cannot be taken by those with certain health problems, Futura's remedy can be used by almost everyone and works on most men within just 10 minutes and usually within 5. The other products may be good but MED3000 is the trick to me. Who knows what the pay off will be but personally, having been a very frustrated and angry investor in Futura for years, I am at last a big optimist for the near future.

31st May '20

Hi Redpanda

Welcome to Stockopedia. It is well worth reading the help sections found from the menu at the top to understand how the site and its data analysis works.

But to briefly answer some of your points.....

The Stockranks are statistical measures. As far as I know, the algorithms behind them have been created by back testing. They run based on historical data and comparison against the other stocks to find how the stock measures up so to speak. You need to add your own qualitative analysis to this. So, no, it’s nothing to do with Stockopedia staff making company visits or adding their personal opinions to arrive at the Stockranks.

The data that is used for each company’s published accounts updates each time the company publishes new results (so that may only be twice a year). Some other external data such as broker data may change more frequently. But the Stockranks are calculated each evening as they are rankings relative to all the other stocks. Things like recent fundraising may not have been included in the data.

There hasn’t been a great deal of interest in Futura as you say. My guess would be that this is because it has taken a huge length of time for them to make progress. While the potential has always been there, the management have lost credibility that they will be able to tap into it. However, they may now be turning a corner.

The discussion about small caps tends to be concentrated in the daily Small Cap Value Report (SCVR) posts. However, Paul and Graham N who write these reports tend not to comment on some sectors and pharma type business is one of them. However, whenever Futura publish an interesting set of results or RNS you can put your own comment about it in the comments section that day and others will probably make their comments in return. If the company hasn’t issued an RNS and you just want to discuss it in general then it is better to do so on another thread (like this one).

Futura remains on my watch list for now.

The upside has been “huge” in this company for years.

It remains well on my barge pole list despite doubling recently.

They had a very marketable product with the condoms. Then ballsed it up. Then ballsed it up again, then ballsed it up some more. Then the chairman said “I don’t see future as a commercial company” or words to that effect. If you’re not a commercial company, what exactly are you?

At the moment it’s a means of transferring every larger amounts of other peoples money into the directors pockets.

The “products” are all hopes and dreams, I’ll wait for the profits.

Future Medical: FUM .....your thoughts gratefully received

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DavidRoss

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