They say that data is the new oil – and Sensyne Health has plenty of it, writes James Faulkner.
It has long been mooted that the NHS harbours a wealth of patient information that could be put to beneficial use, if only it could be harvested and analysed centrally. Being the largest centralised health system on the planet, the NHS is the depository of data that is potentially worth billions – but concerns have often been raised as to how this data might be misused if it fell into the wrong hands.
One AIM-listed company may have found a solution. Sensyne Health is a healthcare technology company that creates value from accelerating the discovery and development of new medicines and improving patient care through the analysis and commercialisation of real-world evidence from large databases of anonymised patient data in collaboration with NHS Trusts.
The advent of Covid has underlined the importance of data-led and (wherever possible) remote healthcare. Seizing on this opportunity, Sensyne raised £27.5 million last December to industrialise its dataset and boost its revenue growth potential. The results up to now have been clear to see, with Sensyne expected to deliver revenues of at least £9m for the year to April 2021, up from £2m the previous year and better than analysts’ expectations.
Ambitious growth plans
Sensyne is currently in the process of building out its Sensight platform, which it expects to industrialise its dataset and enable it to deliver much faster turnaround times for pharmaceutical partners. Expected to be operational within the next few months, Sensight should help the firm target new customers and could prove a game-changer in terms of the company’s growth trajectory.
Sensyne has already expanded its dataset from around 3 million in 2020 to 18 million currently (including 9 million US patients), and it has a pipeline that could deliver another 40 million patient records. With a target of 100 million patient records by 2024, broker Liberum believes Sensyne “is likely to become the global leader in both the quantity and quality of its data which should make it a partner of choice for pharma.”
Inflection point could be close
Broker Liberum expects a pre-tax loss of £5.1 million in the year to April 2022 on sales of £27 million. But this rises to a profit of £14 million on sales of £53.5 million for FY2023. This is some breakneck growth, but the company recently confirmed that based on its contract momentum, it is confident of hitting forecasts for FY2022. So investors can have a certain amount of confidence in these forecasts, notwithstanding the fact that the firm’s business model is still evolving.
Broker Liberum has a price target of 310p, which is more than 100% higher than the current share price (143p at time of writing). The forward P/E of just over 16x appears undemanding given the scale of the opportunity here and the growth being seen to date.