Paxalisib Misses AGILE Hurdle, but Very Significant Value Remains
Investors Over-React, Smart Ones Will Profit
Kazia Therapeutics (KZA) announced yesterday morning that paxalisib did not meet the threshold to move into stage 2 of the GBM AGILE clinical trial (NCT03970447). The study was an adaptive trial designed to assess the potential of new therapeutics to treat the highly aggressive brain cancer glioblastoma (GBM) in a cost-effective manner. Demonstrating efficacy in GBM is an extremely high hurdle as shown by the fact that there is only one approved drug for the disease, temozolomide, and it is only effective in 1/3 of patients.
Given the high nature of the hurdle, in our original initiating coverage report on KZA, we only gave paxalisib a small chance of returning a positive result from the overall study. That is the nature of drug development with one group estimating only 6% to 7% of new chemical entities that commence clinical trials reach launch (Dowden & Munro (2019) Nat Rev Drug Discov). The small percentage that do make it to launch, however, more than make up for the cash spent on those that don’t.
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The Cash keeps coming
Terracom will report their FY2022 results in September 2022. In the last two months there have been a number of company announcements that have given us improved visibility on our earnings forecasts and valuation metrics so we have taken this opportunity to update our numbers.
With the combination of geopolitical factors in the northern hemisphere as well as disruption from other supply regions, we believe the visibility on export coal prices over the next 12 months has also improved since our March note.
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Acquisitions underpin strong near term growth opportunities not reflected in share price
Stealth Global Holdings (SGI) provides direct exposure to the growing industrial consumables market, driven by favourable conditions across key industries, expanding industrialisation and improving workplace safety regulations. Around 95% of revenue is attributable to non-discretionary items.
Based on our current forecasts, we derive a DCF equity value for SGI of $0.33 per share, with potential upside if full synergies can be extracted. We note SGI is currently trading on very undemanding forward multiples.
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4Q reveals more focus on profit and cash flow
• LBY’s 4Q FY22 quarterly activities update showed continued solid growth in top line metrics, albeit slowing, with GMV of NZ$203m (+26% on pcp) and income of NZ$12.1m (+23% on pcp).
• Net Transaction Margin (NTM) disappointed at -0.5%, due to further increase in credit losses from 4.0% to 4.9% of GMV. However, new fraud and credit risk management tools have seen losses recover materially with NTM back to 1.2% in March and LBY is confident of further recovery in coming months.
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Signs MOU with Ford Company – Kachi is now sold out!
Lake Resources (LKE. ASX) – LKE has signed two non-binding MOU’s in the space of 10 days. Ford Company (Ford) has signed an MOU for ~25,000t/year and last week Hanwa, a Japanese commodity trader signed a MOU for up to 25,000t/year. Subject to execution, this is an amazing feat as Ford and Hanwa are prepared to enter into longer-term strategic partnerships with LKE. Commercial negotiations are still ongoing but are expected, especially if Ford & Hanwa inject new equity into LKE, to further de-risk the project financing & thus ensure LKE and Kachi are fully funded.
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Strategic Vanadium-battery growth with Titanium & Iron earnings resiliency
TNG Ltd is an ASX-listed technology owner and developer of the world-class Mount Peake near-surface vanadiferous titanomagnetite deposit. To unlock value, TNG will concentrate ore from its central Northern Territory mine for processing through its patented TIVAN® process produce three premium quality revenue streams: hi-purity vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) for steel alloys and Vanadium Redox Flow batteries, a quality titanium pigment for paints and a premium steel input with >64%Fe iron ore fines.
Promising exploration and development update while SOP prices continue to rise
Two recent gravity surveys have considerably exceeded expectations and revealed potential for extensions to the existing MRE at Lake Throssell, plus a material growth opportunity at Lake Yeo. This reinforces the potential for a multi-decade, Tier-1 SOP production hub based around Lake Throssell.
TMG is currently completing work towards the PFS due early 2023, including drilling to start in Q3 2022, evaporation trials and permitting activities. Results from these programs will support the PFS and any future resource upgrade.
Benchmark SOP prices have risen to ~US$940/t due to recent geopolitical developments. The Oct 2021 Scoping Study assumed a SOP price of US$550/t and contained a sensitivity analysis showing every 10% increase in price drives a +$144m increase in the project NPV of $364m. The c.70% increase above the Scoping Study thus implies a project NPV of ~$1.4bn.
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Biopharmas Hit, but Buying Opportunities Created
The news being reported about the performance of biotechnology has been dour, to say the least, for some time now. Those dour articles have been deserved with the iShares Biotechnology Exchange-Traded Fund down 25% and the SPDR® S&P® Biotech ETF is down 45% from their highs. However, those articles are backward-looking, and successful investors need to be looking forward.
Recently, however, an article in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery caught our eye which we believe should point the way forward for the vast majority of Australian biotechnology investors. This article indicates that, at least, two companies, Antisense Therapeutics (ANP) and Kazia Therapeutics (KZA), are right in the sweet spot in terms of the future of drug development.
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Hitting goals – Making four material announcements
We initiated on Magnis Energy Technologies (MNS.ASX) in December 2021 and since then, MNS has made four material announcements. Firstly; a conditional offtake contract for 600,000t of graphite concentrate from the Tanzanian Nachu Project (net 100%) was signed with Traxys, a global
commodities merchant with annual revenue of ~US$6Bn; secondly; semi autonomous production has started at battery gigafactory iM3NY, thirdly;
exciting Extra Fast Charge battery tests were reported and most recently, the game changing launch of the Lithium Slim Energy Reserve battery platform, which supports C4V’s growing EFC capability.
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Increasing our Target
Despite the lower realised oil and gas price, which fell by 5.4% and 19.7% respectively in August, Calima managed to show improvement in its key business metrics.
We expect higher production in November due to the contribution by the new Thorsby wells which will be drilled in August/September which will see Calima meet its 2021 production guidance of 4,500 boe/d.
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Emerging Financial Wealth Advisory Group
WT Financial Group Limited (WTL) is a growing diversified financial services company, founded in 2010 and listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) in 2015. Its advice and product offerings are delivered primarily through a group of independent financial advisers operating as authorised representatives of WTL under its Wealth Today Pty Ltd (Wealth Today) and Sentry Group Pty Ltd (Sentry Group) dealer group operations. It has around 275 advisers across more than 200 financial advice practices Australia-wide. It also operates a direct-to-consumer operation under its Spring Financial Group brand.
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Immutep Taking the Fight to Cancer
In May 2021, Corporate Connect analyst Marc Sinatra published a comprehensive research report on ASX-listed biotech Immutep Ltd (ASX: IMM). So impressed was he with IMM that Corporate Connect felt it imperative that a follow-up report be released placing a valuation on the company, because the market was not seeing the vast potential of eftilagimod alpha (efti).
This follow-up report has been released today. Using comparables, after adding cash back to their EV estimate and dividing by the total number of issued shares, Corporate Connect now places the fair value of an Immutep share at $A2.20.
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Phillips 66 to acquire 16% in NVX – 12-month target price rises 7% through project de-risking
Phillips 66 (PSX) has entered into an agreement with NVX to acquire 77.9m new shares for US$150m (A$203m). PSX is the worlds largest producer of speciality petroleum coke a precursor for battery grade synthetic graphite anode materials found with an Enterprise Value of US$47.5Bn and assets of US$57Bn.
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Market leading lifelong learning platform technology company in Australia and SE Asia
PayGroup (PYG) delivers multi-country BPO services and cloud SaaS HCM solutions, assisting companies to manage employees in multiple, complex jurisdictions. The company has many growth opportunities, including new clients, new jurisdictions, new products, partner expansion, and new revenue sources. PYG’s scalable business model allows operating leverage and with savings from in-housing third party technology, support margin expansion.
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Market leading lifelong learning platform technology company in Australia and SE Asia
OpenLearning (OLL) is a higher education technology company that operates a scalable online learning platform through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model and provides a global marketplace of high quality courses for learners of all levels. Its primary customers are education providers based in Australia and South-East Asia (primarily Malaysia). OLL started operations in Australia in 2012 and expanded to Malaysia in 2015, Singapore in 2018, and recently also Indonesia.
