According to medical journal The Lancet, around 100m people in China suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - 6 times more than in the US - which is primarily caused by smoking and poor air quality.
 
Clearly this is a dreadful situation that the Beijing government wishes to remedy quickly, to both improve the quality of life of these sick patients and boost the nation's economic productivity.
 
Therefore, it was hardly surprising to hear today that the Hong Kong Department of Health - the country's FDA equivalent - had approved Belluscura’s (BELL) leading X-PLOR portable oxygen concentrator (POC), which has been exclusively licensed under a 10-year deal worth $55m to its manufacturing partner Innomax across the greater China region. First orders have already been booked via a Hong Kong distributor, with Belluscura right on track to commercialise this state-of-the-art technology.
 
Elsewhere, production of the new flagship DISCOV-R POC also begins this week, where volumes will gradually ramp up through a controlled roll out to satisfy $15m of advanced orders).
 
In fact, I suspect Belluscura might even have received far more demand than originally anticipated, and so wants to ensure the launch is executed with surgical precision, especially as DISCOV-R’s patient usability study has now been completed with participants providing favourable feedback on the device.
 
CEO Bob Rauker commented: “We are very excited to receive the approval and begin sales in Hong Kong. I am very pleased with our operations, quality control and sales teams receiving approval ahead of schedule. Hong Kong is phase one of our joint expansion with Innomax into Asia.”
 
In terms of the numbers, the stock is attractively priced on a risk/reward basis, currently trading at 37.5p -  or a market capitalisation of £46m against Dowgate Capital’s target price of 125p a share. The latter is based on turnover climbing from $3.0m in 2023, to $22.5m and $47.5m over the following two years. Likewise, cashflow is set to turn positive in 2025, after closing December 23 with net debt of $3m, including $5.5m of 10% 3-year convertible loan notes.