MGC Pharmaceuticals / Argent BioPharma
MGC Pharmaceuticals has become the latest UK-listed cannabis company to opt for a rebrand in 2024, as businesses increasingly try to diversify and distance themselves from the difficulties experienced across the cannabis sector over the last year in the eyes of investors.
Less than two months into the year MGC has become the third cannabis company to announce a name change, announcing yesterday that it is set to rebrand as Argent BioPharma.
It comes after Cellular Goods officially re-registered its name with Companies House this week as Cel AI PLC, following an initial announcement in January, and former cannabis investment company Pharma C rebranded to Mortgage Chat PLC earlier this month.
In an update to investors, MGC said it was ‘embracing comprehensive restructuring for a new biopharmaceutical era’.
“This rebranding is the culmination of an extensive restructuring, incorporating significant American capital and operational revisions,” it continued.
As part of this restructuring, MGC says it will ‘leverage cutting-edge advancements in polypharmacology and nanotechnology’, in an apparent effort to diversify its operations, much as Cellular Goods and Pharma C have done.
However, the company affirmed its dedication to its existing cannabis-based products CannEpil, CimetrA and CogniCann, but said it is ‘committed to introducing new treatment options every four years’.
To achieve this, it said it would leverage its existing European research and development centre which will ‘play a crucial role’ in its drug development process.
It comes just two weeks after MGC published its financial figures for the three months to December 31, 2023.
Over the third quarter, MGC reported ‘receipts from customers’ of A$392,000, down from the previous quarter.
It also reported a net loss from operating activities of A$5.6m, but the company raised a total of US$8.4m over the quarter.
Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies
Another recent and increasing trend in both the European and North American cannabis industries has been ‘capital reorganisations’, enabling companies to improve their stock positions.
On the heels of Aurora’s announcement earlier this month, and following similar announcements from MGC and Hellenic Dynamics over the last three months, LSE-listed Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies (OCT) is the latest company to pursue such a strategy.
Yesterday, OCT announced that, following shareholder approval, it had now applied to the Financial Conduct Authority for its ‘redenominated shares’ to be readmitted to the Main Market of the LSE on February 16.
The redenomination will see each ordinary share of 0.1p readmitted to the stock exchange and redominated as 1p.
Following the move, the number of OCT shares in circulation will remain at 960,415,644.
Each shareholder will receive 1 redominated share and 1 deferred share for each share they held, meaning that ‘existing shareholders will own the same proportion of the company they did immediately prior’ to the reorganisation.
Earlier this week, OCTP received a reiterated valuation of £25.3m (or £26.5m ‘incorporating the recently announced £640k equity issue’) from leading independent research firm Edison, placing its value at over 5x its current market cap.
Based on the company’s recent interim results, Edison said that while it has ‘rolled forward’ its model and adjusted its valuation based on the latest cash figure, its underlying valuation remains unchanged.
This valuation was ‘100% ascribed’ to OCT’s leading compound, which Edison expects to launch in 2030.
However, it noted that its second compound has significant ‘potential upside’ and plans to incorporate this into its valuation ‘once it enters the clinic’.
It comes amid a busy period for OCT, which at the end of January announced plans to raise £640,000 from existing shareholders and new investors, as mentioned above.
Additionally, the company announced that it is in talks with Cantheon Capital LLC to raise up to £565,000 via a Convertible Loan Note (CLN).
This announcement came alongside news that OCT had received a £1.275m R&D tax credit from HMRC in respect of the financial year ended 30 April 2023.
Cannabis Poland, Hemp & Health
The pair of Polish cannabis companies both saw their stock prices skyrocket this week thanks to a number of updates regarding their joint owned wholesaler THC Pharma SA.
On February 09, it was announced that THC Pharma was issued a permit from the Main Pharmaceutical Inspector for ‘wholesale trade in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances’.
This extension to the pharmaceutical wholesaler’s existing permit enables it to sell medical cannabis, allowing the company to move ahead with its objective for the next two years to introduce dried cannabis and oils with THC above 0.3% into Polish pharmacies.
Days later, on February 12, THC Pharma announced that it had signed a commercial agreement with a producer in Portugal to supply ‘medical cannabis to (its) facility’.
The companies noted that ‘due to the legal conditions and restrictions, as well as the complicated and protracted process of obtaining approval for the import of medical marijuana into Poland, the first import of the product released by the plant is tentatively expected in the fourth quarter of this year.’
