# OptiBiotix Health PLC Q&A with CEO Stephen O’Hara (LON:OPTI)

- Link: https://www.directorstalkinterviews.com/optibiotix-health-plc-qa-ceo-stephen-ohara-lonopti/412733774
- Published: 2017-08-17T08:30:17+01:00
- Author: Amilia Stone

**OptiBiotix Health PLC** (LON:OPTI) Chief Executive Officer Stephen O’Hara caught
up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the recent share price
movement, their deal pipeline, the 39 potential RNS’s that could be announced in
the following months & what this all means for investors

 

**Q1: Just recently, there’s been a fall in OptiBiotix Health’s share price, how
would you explain the share price performance?**

**A1**: There has been some volatility in the share price, the first thing I wanted
to do was to reassure investors that there’s nothing wrong. If you look back at 
where we are now to where we were say 12 months or so ago, the share price was higher
12 months or so ago but undoubtedly, we’re in a stronger position today than we 
were when the share price was trading at 80p. Even more importantly, if we look 
towards the future, there are a lot more opportunities we are progressing which 
are at a later stage, we touched on in previous RNS’s, and are entering the commercialisation
phase. We do recognise there is uncertainty in small caps in general, and that’s
across the board, and we do have a large retail investor base so we will get peaks
and troughs, some shareholders just take profit and there’s also some uncertainty
in the external environment which means that some retail investors start to take
a shorter view.

I would say that if you look at where we are with the company, we’ve just entered
a commercialisation and I believe this next stage of growth, there’s a potential
for share growth which will come when we gain commercial traction with our products.
Based on the high level of interest and lots of ongoing discussions, this look extremely
promising and investors who attended my investor share results presentation earlier
on in the year will recognise we have a structured plan and that’s the reason we
appointed a new Commercial Director, Per Rehné and a new Sales Director in January
2017. They joined us at the end of March and as planned, we launched products in
May and as I reported in previous RNS’s, there’s been a lot of interest, extensive
interest, from our launch of Vitafoods in the middle of May, we’ve been working 
hard to close out deals from those discussions.

We have closed out 2 deals, one with HLH and one with Pharmabiota, both these are
privately-owned pharmaceutical companies so they are far quicker in decision making.
As people are also aware, HLH they had an initial order of 100,000 and last week
they ordered another 200,000 units so you can see that it’s not just signing deals,
HLH for example signed a deal, put the products on the market and now re-ordered
twice the number of units they ordered initially. We have a number of agreements
in our pipeline, 4 private companies like HLH and Pharmabiota but also some larger
corporates, we hope to see these agreements start to close out after the summer 
break.

 

**Q2: You mentioned the deal pipeline, when can investors expect to see these cross
the line?**

**A2**: OptiBiotix Health do have a strong deal pipeline, it’s very difficult to
give accurate timelines for deals because, as I’m sure investors can appreciate,
it’s a two-way negotiation and once any partners suspect you’re working to a time
limit, this can give them leverage in any negotiation. You’ve just got to think 
of situation where you’re trying to buy and sell a car, if you’re trying to sell
your car very quickly, the price changes.

However, to give our investors flavour of the amount of interest in OptiBiotix Health,
we’ve had large interest since Vitafoods but a number of discussions prior to Vitafoods.
As a team, we review the potential news flow going forward and we estimate that 
there are 39 opportunities for RNS’s between August of this year and the end of 
year so that’s an awful lot of opportunities. Now, not all of these will turn into
RNS’s, as often there are 2–3 companies looking for deals in the same territory,
investors will note that our deals with Pharmabiota and HLH are non-exclusive deals
so that creates opportunities for maybe 2 or 3 companies in the same territory. 
Generally speaking, particularly with larger corporates, they want a single territory
or a single continent so it would exclude others but hopefully those sort of numbers,
we’re sitting on opportunities that we’re looking at, maybe not all of them will
develop but it gives investors flavour about the amount of activity taking place
and the scale of the opportunity.

So, there’s an awful lot going on, that in itself creates a challenge of the breadth
of capability within the team, particularly over these summer months when people
are on holidays but we hope to be closing out a number of deals as we exit the summer
holidays.

 

**Q3: Can you tell me what all this means for OptiBiotix Health investors?**

**A3**: I think it looks very promising for investors and of course, I am probably
the largest single private investor and my family have a large stake holding in 
the company, many of those bought at 75p and we’re below that now. So, as I said
at the start of this interview, I want to reassure investors that the fluctuation
in share price don’t worry me but in terms of what it means for investors, you need
to look at this across the board.

We’re in a really exciting space, the microbiome, we’re building not just a single
product technology platform but we’re developing a number of product platforms and
these are at different stages of development and I created this purposely as it 
spreads investor risk across a number of opportunities. Of course, those earlier
platforms, the SlimBiome and the OptiScreen platform that creates the cholesterol
product LPLDL, they’re now entering the commercial phase of development with the
launch of Vitafoods in mid-May of this year so early stage of commercialisation.
As mentioned earlier, these products have stirred up a lot of commercial interest
and I think there’s a number of times now, that this is probably the greatest interest
I’ve had in any product and we hope that these will come to fruition in the next
few months.

Investors should also note, if they look up Biopharma or Pharmabiota, these companies
have a very good reputation for investing in scientifically validated products which
they sell into the high-value pharmaceutical market. It’s the growing trend in both
small and large companies in Pharmabiota products of this type so these are products
that are natural products, that have a strong clinical evidence base and a lot of
science behind them.

From OptiBiotix Health’s point of view, we are establishing early sales in these
pharmacies and this helps build credibility in the science and consumer acceptance
as pharmaceutical products. This opens up opportunities then to larger retailers
to maybe recognise the opportunity there in terms of the science behind these products
and the traction in the pharmacies will then build into their sales pipelines going
forward.

I just hope investors can start to see the momentum building up as we create multiple
partnerships across multiple territories with each partner starting to contribute
small amounts but incrementally increasing to grow revenue. We see this as a very
low risk, low cost approach to accessing multiple healthcare markets and pharmaceuticals
markets across the world which, if we’re successful in this, we can generate 7-figure
revenues in the forthcoming years.

So, we can see a lot of opportunities with the early stage and that early stage 
development, as I touched on earlier, creates the opportunity for substantive share
growth. So, initially, we we’re in early stage of scientific development and now
we’re in the early stages of commercial development and there’s a lot of activity
taking place which have the potential to create substantial value. Now, we hope 
that investors will see that and stick with us as we go forward.

Share on: