Relax buddy.
Remember that for the long term investor, shorters can create opportunities to buy at cheaper prices and sell at higher prices.
Don't forget that anyone that is shorting the stock today -
is guaranteed to be a buyer at some point in the future, and it costs them money to continue to hold that short position, while it costs long investors like you and me nothing to hold our long positions.
I find the focus on shorts here, and on hotcopper more broadly, way overblown and unproductive.
Rather than complaining about how far shorts have driven the price down at a point in time, the discussion could be more productively focused on how big the opportunity shorts may have created by driving the stock too far down below intrinsic value - in which case - any positive price catalyst, e.g. a big contract announcement, takeover by another company (maybe J&J?), or maybe just another big sales month - is likely to propel the stock higher and driven even higher and faster by the shorts that may be forced to abandon their position.
From my point of view, the company has made significant progress and is in a significantly better position than it was 12 months ago, yet the share price has almost fallen to the price it was at 12 months ago. It is a bargain.
Some key points:
- U.S revenue growth remains strong at 42%
- ROW growth is exceeding my expectations (and also the expectations of analysts covering PNV) going at 122%. This is not an easy feat to achieve. Most companies generally find ROW sales outside of the U.S very difficult to to grow quickly because of the fragmented markets in asia, Europe etc. So far, this does not appear to be the case and adoption continues to grow very well. I suspect most analysts are seeing this as an anomaly and expect growth rates to fall significantly and soon, so if ROW growth continues to do well, it will beat the market expectations in that regard.
- Revenue growth in Australia/NZ which is considered a comparatively more 'mature' market given PNV is now considered the standard of care, also continues to grow strongly (and it appears analysts had underestimated this market and assumed it would slow a lot more a lot faster which has been proven wrong). I think this is also proving up another part of my thesis which is that PNV is so good it is growing the market significantly, and the total addressable market remains significantly underestimated by analysts.
- The progress in India is significantly far more advanced than I had hoped for - I don't have any experience with this market and had assumed red tape and a slow moving bureaucracy would mean sales would probably be a long time away, and very slow, but things appear to have been moving very quick, and I am very pleasantly surprised. I think this has the potential to be transformative for the pace of adoption of BTM not just in India but more broadly in a region that has basically had an unmet need given sales of biological devices are virtually non-existent.
- The company is set to deliver profits - which will increase the coverage of the company amongst more investors and fund managers who screen out loss making companies.
- The number of hospitals PNV is being sold to has been increasing at an increasing rate over the past three years:
- 1H24 - 861 hospital (67% increase)
- 1H23 - 515 hospitals (43% increase)
- 1H22 - 361 hospitals (22% increase)
- 1H21 - 295 hospitals (29% increase)
Disclosure: I've reinvested some dividends I've received from other stocks into PNV today, and if the share price continues to fall, whether it be driven by the shorters or not, I will probably continue to do this. I think this is the opportunity to invest in another Cochlear type of company that won't just make a lot of money, but will deliver immeasurable benefits to the lives of many people around the world.
(20min delay)
