OVENTUS TEAMS UP WITH HONG KONG DISTRIBUTOR
BIOTECHNOLOGY can be risky but a new study shows that almost 60 per cent of life-science companies have grown in stockmarket size over the past three years.
At least 25 out of 101 surveyed companies had doubled their market capitalisation, the study by sector analysts Bioshares found.
Fifteen of the 101 companies listed since June 2015 had at least tripled. It came as Brisbane-based sleep apnoea treatment company Oventus, created by dentist Chris Hart, revealed a worldwide distribution deal that it hoped would pick up sales.
Some of the increases in the Bioshares study were off a small base – Brisbane-based Factor Therapeutics, for instance, had lifted from a $10 million market capitalisation in 2015 to $49 million capitalisation in mid-June this year. Its share price has risen from 3.1¢ in 2015 to 6¢ yesterday, but that’s far away from the 84¢ it hit in 2004.
Bioshares also found a return in stockmarket floats and the use of old company shells for biotechnology outfits. Thirty-five companies came to the stockmarket via those avenues since 2015, compared only five floats in the preceding three years.
Oventus was one company which floated last year at 50¢. Its share price initially jumped to $1, but has since tumbled to 38¢.
The company was raising additional funds yesterday after announcing a distribution deal with Hong Kongbased Modern Dental.
Oventus, which uses a mouthguard-like device along with breathing tubes to counteract troubled sleeping, said the deal would help commercialise their product.
Oventus chief executive Neil Anderson said that Modern Dental had a “global footprint” and would help them push into markets such as the US. It would take Oventus a long time to “form these relationships that (Modern Dental) already have”, he said.
While Modern Dental does offer other sleep-related products, Mr Anderson argued Oventus’s device was at a premium end.