ImmuPharma PLC (LON:IMM) – BUY*: L&G increases its holding
Market Cap: £73m; Current Price: 55p; Target Price: 171p
Legal & General increases its holding to 3.35%
ImmuPharma announced that it has received notification by Legal & General Group Plc (L&G) confirming its holding in ImmuPharma of 4,446,545 million Ordinary Shares in the capital of the Company, representing 3.35% of ImmuPharma's total voting rights figure of 132,522,985 Ordinary Shares.
NORTHLAND CAPITAL PARTNERS VIEW: The announcement that L&G increased its stake in ImmuPharma demonstrates the strong interest in the Company’s late-stage clinical drug development programme on Lupuzor, a potential treatment for Lupus. If approved, Lupuzor could achieve multi-billion dollar annual sales.
SalvaRx (LON:SALV) – BUY*: New investment
Market Cap: £11m; Current Price: 29p; Target Price: 149p
Investment in Rift Biotherapeutics Inc.
SalvaRx announced that it has entered into an agreement to invest in Rift Biotherapeutics Inc. (Rift), a private, Delaware-domiciled biotechnology company focused on the development of antibodies for use in oncology.
Under the terms of the agreement, SalvaRx will invest US$1,000,000 for an initial holding of approximately 30% (including new shares issued on the conversion of a US$90,000 convertible loan already provided to Rift) in the company.
Subject to Rift achieving certain development milestones with this initial funding, SalvaRx has the option to invest up to an additional US$1,500,000 at the same valuation and to acquire all outstanding shares of Rift in exchange for new shares in SalvaRx on the same basis.
The initial investment has been funded from existing cash resources.
Rift, an early stage research and development company, was founded in 2015 in order to discover and develop first-in-class antibodies implicated in the inflammatory tumour and tumour infiltrating immune cells microenvironment.
NORTHLAND CAPITAL PARTNERS VIEW: SalvaRx continues delivering on its expansion strategy of building a broad portfolio of immune-oncology assets. Rift represents SalvaRx’s fourth immune-oncology portfolio company. The group has discovered several candidate antibodies to novel immune check point targets. The group’s novel non T-cell based immunotherapy targets offer complementary approaches to the current standard of care in this area. The market for immuno-oncology products is forecast to expand to $80bn by 2020.