Commercialisation partnership signed

RUA’s global commercialisation partner for its range of large bore vascular grafts has been announced as Corcym SRL. Corcym is the heart valve business bought out from Sorin/Livanova in 2021 and is a specialist cardiovascular medical device company with complementary products – like sutureless/minimally invasive aortic valves, mechanical heart valves, aortic prostheses and mitral valves and repair devices. RUA Vascular’s products for straight and aortic root grafts will fit perfectly into Corcym’s catalogue of products servicing the needs of heart surgeons that are sold in over 100 countries.

This transaction with a proven cardiovascular specialist provides RUA with significant validation and should banish the cloud that hovered over RUA since its regulatory stumble on the 510(k) submission for its large bore vascular graft. We estimate that the cost of establishing a cardiovascular sales network for the US alone would have been in excess of $10 million. The details released on the transaction note the sharing of gross margin on global sales equally between RUA and Corcym. Investors will remember the investments that RUA has made in clean room manufacturing capacity which we had assumed at the time were not just for clinical trial supplies, but eventually for commercialisation. With the deal in place, it appears that RUA’s manufacturing capacity will be matched to Corcym’s global commercialisation network.

For the moment, our valuation remains unchanged at £121.0m or 545p per share but we expect to update this shortly taking into account the new commercialisation agreement.