Telix Pharmaceuticals – strong momentum ahead
Telix Pharmaceuticals Limited (ASX:TLX) is a Melbourne-headquartered $3.9 billion company which recently entered the Montgomery and Australian Eagle portfolios and seems to have very exciting prospects.
To backtrack, Telix’s targeted radiation imaging and therapy technologies have potential to transform the way clinicians can find and manage cancer to inform treatment decisions and deliver personalised therapy. Its first commercial product for prostate cancer, Illuccix, was launched in April 2022 after approval for use in Australia, Canada and the US. The Company anticipates regulatory approval in many other countries, including the UK, the EU, Brazil and South Korea.
Its revenue has exploded from A$3.7 million in the March 2022 Quarter to A$100 million in the March 2023 Quarter. Over this period, adjusted Quarterly EBITDAR has bounced from negative $17 million to positive $37 million, a $54 million improvement. Interestingly, the “R” in EBITDAR stands for Research and Development expenditure, and this accounted for 21 per cent of revenue ($21 million) in the March 2023 Quarter. TLX claims to have the potential to service 90 per cent of U.S. positron emission tomography (PET) market, currently valued at US$1 billion.
Telix’s core pipeline aims to address unmet medical needs in prostate, kidney, brain and blood cancer. Manufacturing facilities in Sacramento, USA, and Brussels, Belgium, are being scaled up for the ProstACT GLOBAL Phase 111 study. In addition, commercialisation for kidney (ZIRCON) and brain (IPAX101-CDx) cancer is expected from 2024.
Apart from organic and development growth, Telix – which had cash and cash equivalents of $121 million at 31 March 2023 – have announced some recent complementary acquisitions. In April 2023 the Vienna-based Dedicaid was purchased. Its core asset is a clinical decision support software AI (Artificial Intelligence) platform capable of rapidly generating available datasets for use with PET modalities. Dedicaid enhances Telix’s ability to rapidly generate new applications from clinical imaging data include predicting disease progression and treatment response.
More recently TLX purchased Lightpoint Medical, a UK-based medical device company specialising in the intra-operative detection of targeted radiopharmaceuticals. Its SENSEI radio-guided surgery business is an ultra-miniature robotic gamma probe that is able to provide radio-guided surgery by enabling the intraoperative detection of cancer in real time. TLX plans to align SENSEI with its Illuccix programs for prostate cancer.
TLX claims that of approximately 100,000 men per year who receive radical prostatectomy in the U.S., 85 per cent are performed robotically and “the use of molecular imaging has the potential to drive a paradigm shift in the surgical treatment in cancer in terms of through put and patient outcomes”.
Chief Executive Officer of Montgomery Investment Management, David Buckland has over 30 years of industry experience. David is a deeply knowledgeable and highly experienced financial services executive. Prior to joining Montgomery in 2012, David was CEO and Executive Director of Hunter Hall for 11 years, as well as a Director at JP Morgan in Sydney and London for eight years.
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