Welcome to our new product “Friday Takeaway”
This will delve a little deeper on individual companies and focus on non-house stocks under £200m market capitalisation to help raise awareness
Friday Takeaway from UK Small Caps
This will delve a little deeper on individual companies and focus on non-house stocks under £200m market capitalisation to help raise awareness
4th April 2025
Alphabetically arranged
Share prices and market capitalisations taken from Alpha Terminal from the current price on the day of publication.
Top three shareholders are taken from the websites of the companies that we are writing about, unless there is a more up to date TR-1 notification RNS announcement.
Recent news suggests improving prospects
CLX Ringing Improved Numbers
OBI Saving Lives (and Money)
Calnex Solutions 43.5p £38.5m (CLX.L)
Financial Calendar:
Year End March, FY results expected on 20th May, Interims to September, Interim results expected before end November
Three Main Shareholders:
Thomas Cook (CEO) 19.9%, BFG Investment Management Ltd 12.0%, Close Brothers Group 9.0%
Key Investment Points:
Improved Trading, Plenty of recovery upside, Cash of £10.9m
A trading update for the FY March 2025 was hopeful after the trading
disappointments since FY 2023, when it reported a PBT of £7.2m on £27.45m of revenue. The update reported that its key performance metrics had steadily improved throughout the year, achieving 12% growth in revenues to around £18.3m, and an improved gross margin from 74%. The EBITDA is forecast at £5.0m which is a strong recovery from the EBITDA loss of £1.1m at the interims, which contained increased R&D and depressed demand from the telecoms market. Cash at the end of March was £10.9m, which is £2.3m ahead of H1 and the interim dividend of 0.31p was maintained as an improved H2 is anticipated.
Calnex is expert in digital network synchronisation and emulation and its software and hardware provide measurement solutions for the telecommunications sector. Orders for Calnex's Network and Applications Assurance (NAA) products are improving, driven by
renewed demand from the cloud computing, defence and government, satellite and enterprise sectors. The underlying market growth drivers are from mobile networks, continued acceleration of cloud computing, AI growth in technology innovations, network time monitoring as well as datacentre efficiency and effectiveness.
Founded in 2006, Calnex Solutions has a deep and wide customer base and has delivered orders to over 600 customer sites in 68 countries across the world. Clients include telecom equipment vendors eg. CISCO, services providers such as AT&T, and Hyperscale enterprises like Apple, Google and IBM, all using Calnex’s products to improve performance and maintain regulatory standards in a demanding and competitive service sector.
There are new channel partners covering the US, Europe, India, and Asia- Pacific; bringing the total to over 75. The successful execution of the product expansion strategy included a major H2 launch of the new 800GB’s for synchronisation testing. The Board expects continued demand from existing clients for Calnex's new and improved products to be a driver of revenue growth in 2026. Following that, in the Board’s opinion, a high operational leverage effect due to the high margins and control of costs would accelerate profitability, perhaps back towards previous levels.
Hybridan Comment: We calculate that the 2025 EBITDA/ EV is 5.5x, leaving plenty of attractive recovery upside.
Ondine Biomedical Inc. 9.25p £39.8m (OBI.L)
Financial Calendar:
Year End December, FY results expected before end June, Interim results to June, Interim results expected before end September
Three Main Shareholders:
Carolyn Cross (CEO) 26.7%, hInsight-NX LLC 9.5%, M&G Plc 9.2%
Key Investment Points:
Phase 3 Funded, $5.6bn market, Directors are significant shareholders
The Canadian life sciences Company and leader in light-activated antimicrobial therapies has a fully owned lead product, Steriwave, which is a rapid nasal decolonisation therapy that eradicates a broad spectrum of pathogens in the nose in minutes. It is easy to use, environmentally safe, provides substantial health benefits, and costs a fraction of the cost that the infections cost to treat. Based on its patent protected photodisinfection platform are other products with similar characteristics, in various stages of development. The pipeline includes treatment of chronic rhinosinusitis, decolonisation of infections in burns and wounds, and disinfection of endotracheal tubes to reduce the incidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia.
In November 2024, Ondine raised £10m at 8.5p, with the directors and employees investing around £3m. This was preceded by circa £2.8m of funding at 12.5p from Canada in September 2024 and in January 2025, a further £3.1m was raised in the US at approximately 8.3p. The combined £16m raised is for US-based Phase 3 clinical trials of patients using the nasal photodisinfection system to prevent infection and kill germs. The cash runway is into late Q4 2025, by which time the Phase 3 topline results are anticipated. This should lead to regulatory approval and potentially to world-wide commercial agreements. The global market is worth approximately $5.6bn in 2025 and is expected to be $6.7bn in 2030. The largest market is the US where tariffs do not affect medical devices, although that could change, but OBI has a US base.
Following a sequence of progressive news this week, Ondine moved further towards commercialisation. A health economic analysis by the York Health Economics Consortium (YHEC) was published stating that using the Steriwave, nasal decolonisation prior to major surgery delivers substantial net cost savings. The YHEC study demonstrated that for every £1 spent on Steriwave to prevent surgical site infections (SSI), the NHS can save an average of £1.49 to £2.38 across major surgical specialties. This makes a £38 to £107 net saving per operation, so potentially saving UK hospitals, including the NHS, up to £200m per annum. In our opinion, this substantial return on investment should help drive its adoption, when approved. Hybridan Comment: Steriwave should be funded for Phase 3 approval, and as further milestones are passed, we believe it gets nearer to licencing deals and potentially a significant increase in value.
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In the United Kingdom, this document is directed at and is for distribution only to persons who (i) fall within article 19(5) (persons who have professional experience in matters relating to investments) or article 49(2) (a) to (d) (high net worth companies, unincorporated associations, etc.) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (SI 2005/1529) (as amended) or (ii) persons who are each a professional client or eligible counterparty (as those terms are defined in the Financial Conduct Authority’s Conduct of Business Sourcebook) of Hybridan LLP (all such persons referred to in (i) and (ii) together being referred to as relevant persons). This document must not be acted on or relied up on by persons who are not relevant persons. For the purposes of clarity, this document is not intended for and should not be relied upon by any person who would be classified as a retail client under the Financial Conduct Authority’s Conduct of Business Sourcebook.
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