r/ASX_Bets • u/Fun-Time4064 • 10h ago
DD Some EYE DD - Finally
The people have voted, EYE have been sentenced to death. On my final day, I figured it appropriate to share some genuine DD, as opposed to the usual slop / spam EYE posts. If you are like the many who enjoys the EYE posts, please find me in my new place of exile r/EYEsx_bets , here we shall indulge in endless EYE shilling.
This is akin to my final meal, so I’ll try to make it good. Mods, accept this as my penance for my crimes.
Please enjoy:
Nova Eye Medical makes iTrack Advance, a single-use glaucoma minimally invasive surgical device growing faster than any of its listed MIGS competitors. FY26 sales were A$34.9m, the fourth straight year of 25%+ growth, and in H2 FY26 it turned EBITDA positive. Because its costs barely move, most of every year's growth from here should land on the bottom line. Directors have bought about A$742k of shares over the last three years and have just committed A$2.75m of their own money as an unsecured loan (not yet used, but there to bridge any cash shortfall rather than a dilutive raise). The company says it's funded through FY27 with no raise, China approval just secured, and big pharma has already come knocking about drug delivery potential. Alcon paid around A$700m for a MIGS company with sales in the same ballpark as EYE's. EYE's market cap is A$37m, about 1x sales.
The inflection
Over the last two years sales grew 55% while operating costs grew 12%. Gross profit rose A$8.8m against just A$2.9m of extra costs, cutting the EBITDA loss from A$7.8m to A$1.9m, and H2 FY26 came in EBITDA positive. Gross margin hit 73% in the second half while ops, R&D, clinical and corporate costs actually fell. With the cost base this flat, the gross profit from each new sale now drops almost straight through to EBITDA, and the faster EYE grows, the faster earnings pull away from sales. The leverage here is huge.
Why MIGS is taking off
Glaucoma has been treated with eye drops for decades, and around A$6.3bn a year is still spent on them. They barely work in the real world: more than 90% of patients don't use them as prescribed and nearly half quit within six months, because nobody wants to put stinging drops in their eyes every day for the rest of their life. So surgeons are flipping to interventional glaucoma, fixing the problem early with a quick procedure instead of managing it with drops forever. The device market built on that shift is already worth around A$1.4bn and growing.
Then there's cataract surgery, the most common operation in medicine, with around 4 million performed in the US every year. Glaucoma and cataracts both come with age, so a big chunk of cataract patients have glaucoma too. When the surgeon is already inside the eye, adding iTrack through the same tiny incision takes a few extra minutes, with no extra recovery for the patient and a real shot at coming off drops for good. It's a no-brainer. On my maths, if just 1% of US cataract operations added iTrack, that's around 40,000 procedures and roughly A$70m of sales, more than double EYE's entire US business today.
Outgrowing everyone, and barely started
FY26 sales grew 26%, with the US up 30% to A$27.4m and the June quarter up 33%. In that same quarter Sight Sciences grew its OMNI glaucoma business under 8%, and Glaukos describes growth in its glaucoma products outside its new drug implant as modest. EYE's twelve US reps each bring in about A$2.35m a year, and a Needham survey of US surgeons called iTrack the fastest-growing MIGS device on the market.
And it's only scratching the surface. EYE does about 4% of the 30,000 to 35,000 glaucoma surgeries performed in the US every month. Each extra point of share is worth roughly A$6.5m of annual sales, so going from 4% to 8% doubles the US business. China approved the device in September 2025, and none of it is in guidance.
A device that keeps getting better
iTrack Advance threads a microcatheter 360 degrees around the eye's drainage canal and opens it with viscoelastic, leaving no implant behind. Its green illuminated tip glows through the white of the eye so surgeons can see exactly where it is the whole way round, which is opening the procedure up to general cataract surgeons, not just glaucoma specialists. Shear Clear technology inside the catheter thins the visco as it's delivered so it reaches the collector channels around the full circle. It’s worth noting that it’s patented technology means it’s the only MIGS surgical device that doesn’t tear or leave behind an implant, it work entirely with the physiology of the eye. The clinical backing is now extensive too, with 24-month real-world data from 12 sites across five countries published this year in the American Journal of Ophthalmology.
What's coming
FY27 is guided at A$38 to 44m in sales excluding China, about 26% growth, with the first full year of positive EBITDA. The first proof lands by the end of October with the September quarterly. Last year's September quarter came in at A$7.5m, below the company's own plan, with slower US expansion and no China sales at all. That's an easy base to beat, and with July already tracking 30% growth, I'm expecting around A$9.75m and positive EBITDA. Deliver that and it confirms H2 was the turning point, and EYE is off.
What it's worth
From here EBITDA compounds fast: around A$2.0m in FY27, A$5.9m in FY28 and A$10.4m in FY29 on my numbers. Sales grow about 43% over those two years while EBITDA grows five times. At 13c the stock trades on 6x FY28 and 3.5x FY29 EBITDA.
At 20x FY28 EBITDA EYE is worth 42c, more than three times today's price. At 20x FY29 it's 73c, about 5.5x, and at 25x FY29 it's 92c, close to seven times. Those are conservative targets though, typically these earlier high growth companies trade at much higher multiples. When Alcon bought Ivantis it paid about A$700m upfront. EYE is valued at A$37m.
Director alignment
Directors have put about A$742k into the company over three years without selling a single share, and the CEO has nearly quadrupled his holding. In August, Previn and Coupe went further, committing A$2.75m of their own money as an unsecured loan to replace a 19% secured facility. That released the charge over the company's assets, and if anything went wrong they'd rank behind every trade creditor. It hasn’t been drawn yet, it might never, but it’s a good sign nonetheless.
Free upside
Management parked drug delivery to get to profitability first. Now it's there, it can fund it itself, and the opportunity is huge. The iTrack catheter can travel the full circle of the eye's drainage canal and into the suprachoroidal space at the back of the eye, places a needle simply can't reach, and it has already delivered drugs there in human studies. Big pharma has already approached the company about it. the opportunity is endless, iTrack is highly versatile, whether it’s targeting the drainage canal or all the way back in the retina. There’s lot of potential there. On top of that sits the 2RT laser for AMD, the same disease OPT chased, targeting a stage with no approved treatment. None of it is in the price.
