Report
Brian Moretta ...
  • Dorothea Hill
  • Doug Hawkins
  • Mark Thomas
  • Martin Hall
  • Mike Foster
  • Nigel Hawkins
  • Paul Singer
  • Stephen Clapham
  • Thomas Wigglesworth
  • Tony Williams
  • Yingheng Chen

Hardman & Co Monthly: March 2018

In the March 2018 edition of the Hardman Monthly Newsletter, Nigel Hawkins addresses the attractions of quoted infrastructure funds that maintain a low profile.
Over the next decade, infrastructure investment levels will remain high, especially in the energy, utilities and railways sectors. As such, infrastructure funds are well-placed to benefit from this trend.
These funds, three of which are valued by the market at over £2bn, have been resilient performers over the last five years, although there has been some share price weakness of late.
By contrast, utility stocks have suffered on the back of regulatory and political concerns – a scenario unlikely to disappear for some time.
Furthermore, the controversial liquidation of Carillion has raised real concerns about the future of both PFI and PPP deals; these have been key to the profitability of several support services businesses.
Underlyings
Alliance Pharma PLC

Alliance Pharma is a holding company. Co. is engaged in the acquisition, marketing and distribution of pharmaceutical and other medical products.

Arbuthnot Banking Group

Arbuthnot Banking Group is primarily involved in banking and financial services. Co. is organized into three main operating segments: Retail banking (associate), which incorporates household cash management, personal lending and banking and insurance services; U.K. Private banking, which incorporates private banking, commercial banking and wealth management; and Group Centre, which is comprised in Co.'s Group Centre management. As of Dec 31 2016, Co.'s total assets were £1.27 billion.

Avacta Group

Avacta Group is a biotechnology company that is developing biotherapeutics and reagents based on its proprietary Affimer technology, an engineered alternative to antibodies. Affimer® reagents and therapeutics are a class of non-antibody binding proteins that have been engineered for a range of applications where antibodies and aptamers have limitations. Co. has two operating segments: Life Sciences, which provides custom Affimers for reagents and diagnostics, drug and biomarker discovery in biotech research and development; and Animal Health, which provides tools and contract services to assist diagnosis of conditions in animals to enable treatment for veterinarians.

Bionomics

Bionomics is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company. Co utilizes its proprietary platform technologies to discover and develop a pipeline, drug candidates focused on the treatment of central nervous system disorders and on the treatment of cancer. Co.'s key drug candidate BNC210, which for the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder, is a proprietary negative allosteric modulator of the alpha-7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. Co. also develops BNC101, which its lead humanized monoclonal antibody targeting a key receptor on cancer stem cells that is overexpressed in metastatic colorectal cancer, metastatic pancreatic cancer and many other solid tumors.

Burford Capital Limited

Chamberlin

Chamberlin is engaged in the production and sale of iron castings. Co. operates in two segments, Foundries and Engineering. The Foundries segment is engaged in supplying iron castings, in raw or machined form, to a variety of industrial customers who incorporate the castings into their own products or carry out further machining or assembly operations on the castings before selling them on to their customers. The Engineering segment is engaged in manufacturing and imported products to distributors and end-users operating in the safety and security markets. The products fall into the categories of door hardware, hazardous area lighting and control gear.

City Of London Investment Group

City of London Investment Group is the holding company for a number of subsidiaries. The principal operating subsidiary is City of London Investment Management Company Limited, which acts as an investment manager on 38 accounts with a total of £3.58 billion under management as at June 30 2017. Co. is an asset management group with an institutional client focus specializing in Emerging Market closed-end fund investments. Co.'s range also include Developed, Frontier and Global Tactical Asset Allocation closed-end fund strategies.

Collagen Solutions

Collagen Solutions is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, Co. is engaged in the supply, development and manufacture of medical-grade collagen components and biomaterials for use in regenerative medicine, medical devices and in-vitro diagnostics. Co.'s primary products include medical-grade collagen, the primary protein in those tissues that provides a supportive environment for the cells, and processed native tissues such as pericardium, a tissue that surrounds the heart, and medical-grade collagen formulations. Co. supplies these as standard raw materials as well as in custom formulations that are used for the basic research to regenerative medicine therapies and medical devices.

Diurnal Group

Diurnal Group is a pharma company developing products for the life-long treatment of chronic endocrine conditions. Co. is focused on addressing clinical and patient needs in hormone replacement, initially by developing and marketing products for the rare orphan diseases congenital adrenal hyperplasia and adrenal insufficiency. Co.'s products include Infacort®, an immediate-release hydrocortisone preparation targeting Adrenal Insufficiency (including Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia) in children under six years of age in Europe and 16 years of age in the U.S.; and Chronocort®, a modified-release hydrocortisone preparation, initially targeting Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia in adult patients.

Evgen Pharma

Evgen Pharma is a clinical stage drug development company. Co.'s pipeline is based on its proprietary Sulforadex® technology, and includes a number of synthetic, stabilised analogues of the naturally occurring compound sulforaphane.

Genedrive

Genedrive is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, Co. is a molecular diagnostics business developing and commercializing a point of care diagnostics platform for the diagnosis of infectious diseases and for use in patient stratification (genotyping), pathogen detection and other indications. Co.'s Genedrive® is a patented small polymerase chain reaction platform which enables rapid nucleic acid amplification and detection from various sample types, including plasma, sputum and buccal swabs. Co. also provides contract research services to drug development companies under the Epistem brand name.

Healius

Primary Health Care is a medical center operator engaged in providing diagnostic imaging services and pathology services. Co. operates three principal operating segments: Medical Centres, which provides a range of services and facilities to general practitioners, specialists and other health care providers; Pathology, which provides pathology services; and Imaging, which provides imaging and scanning services from stand-alone imaging sites and from within the consolidated entity's medical centres.

Inland Homes

Inland Homes is engaged in land regeneration business, focusing on developing sites in the south and south east of England. The principal activity of Co. is to acquire residential and mixed use sites and planning consent for development. Co. develops a number of the plots for private sale and sells consented plots to housebuilders.

Morses Club

Morses Club is a United Kingdom consumer finance business in the Home Collected Credit market. Co.'s customers are served by self-employed agents, as well as employees based across 98 branches. Co. operates through a series of local branches based all over the UK. Co.'s field management team operate from these branches, working with its network of self-employed agents.

Non-Standard Finance

Non-Standard Finance is a holding company. Through its subsidiaries, Co. is engaged in the provision and servicing of secured and unsecured personal instalment loans.

Oxford BioMedica PLC

Oxford BioMedica is a producer of gene and cell therapy in lentiviral vector and cell therapy research, development and production. Gene and cell therapy is the treatment of disease by the delivery of therapeutic deoxyribonucleic acid into a patient's cells. This can be achieved either in vivo (referred to as gene therapy) or ex vivo (referred to as cell therapy), the latter being where patients' cells are genetically modified cells outside the body before being re-infused. Co.'s products include: OXB-102, which targets Parkinson's disease; OXB-202, which targets corneal graft rejection; and OXB-302 (CAR-T 5T4), which targets targets a range of cancers.

R.E.A. Holdings PLC

R.E.A. Holdings is principally engaged in the cultivation of oil palms in the province of East Kalimantan in Indonesia and in the production and sale of crude palm oil and crude palm kernel oil. Ancillary to these activities, Co. generates renewable energy from its methane capture plants to provide power for its own operations and also for sale to local villages via the Indonesian state electricity company. As of Dec 31 2016, Co. held interests in respect of two stone deposits and two coal mining concessions, all of which were located in East Kalimantan in Indonesia.

Redx Pharma

Redx Pharma is engaged in drug discovery, pre-clinical development and licensing. The principal activities of the business are the discovery and development of proprietary, small molecule drugs to address areas of high, unmet medical need. Co. is developing a porcupine inhibitor drug candidate, RXC004, as a cancer treatment using in vivo models of pancreatic and gastric cancer. ROCK1/2 inhibitors (known as systemic pan-Rock inhibitors) are known to induce hypotension. Co.'s ROCK inhibitor is designed to only work at the site of action in the gastrointestinal tract and degrades quickly, once absorbed, through enzyme-mediated metabolism in the blood, deeming it a soft inhibitor.

Scancell Holdings

Scancell Holdings is engaged in the discovery and development of novel vaccines for the treatment of cancer based on its proprietary immuno-oncology platforms, ImmunoBody®, and Moditope®. Co.'s ImmunoBody® consist of SCIB1 melanoma vaccine, and SCIB2 lung cancer vaccine. Co. has a collaboration partnership to evaluate the use of its SCIB2 to treat non-small cell lung cancer. Co.'s Moditope® technology is a vaccine platform that targets neo-epitopes to overcome immune suppression induced by tumour cells. Co.'s Moditope® product, Modi-1 consists of two citrullinated vimentin peptides and one citrullinated enolase peptide for the treatment of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and sarcoma.

Titon Holdings PLC

Titon Holdings is engaged in the design, manufacture, marketing and sales, plus its associate's activity in real estate development: trickle vents and hardware products for the window and door fabricator markets in the U.K., Europe and the U.S.; mechanical ventilation products for the new build residential markets in the U.K. and Europe; and natural ventilation products for the new build residential market in South Korea. The first two activities are carried out by Co.'s subsidiaries, Titon Hardware Limited and Titon Inc. (in the U.S.). The third activity is carried out by Co.'s subsidiary, Titon Korea Co. Ltd. and Browntech Sales Co. Limited, Co.'s associate company.

Woodbois

Obtala is engaged the development of agricultural, food processing and timber projects. These activities are undertaken through both Co. and its subsidiaries.

Yourgene Health

Premaitha is an international molecular diagnostics group which utilize the DNA analysis technology to develop and regulatory approved genetic screening tests. Co.'s primary focus is on non-invasive prenatal tests (NIPT) for pregnant women. Co.'s NIPT solutions include: regulated in vitro diagnostic product supply that enable clinical laboratories to establish their quality assured, regulated, NIPT analysis offering; clinical laboratory service, which available in Manchester, the U.K. and Taipei, Taiwan, where customers can send blood samples for NIPT analysis; and portfolio of technology, which has developed to support laboratories and healthcare to generate the NIPT analysis.

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Analysts
Brian Moretta

Dorothea Hill

Doug Hawkins

Mark Thomas

Martin Hall

Mike Foster

Nigel Hawkins

Paul Singer

Stephen Clapham

Thomas Wigglesworth

Tony Williams

Yingheng Chen

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