James Tissot
James Tissot Slack Capital

Many biotech investments come down to a concentrated bet that Wall Street has become all too familiar with: the reliance on a single lead asset within a narrow development pipeline. Investors often accept long stretches between catalysts for a make-or-break outcome.

While this investment approach can lead to substantial shareholder gains, it also exposes investors to repeated equity dilution from capital-intensive development programs, long periods before meaningful value is realised, and continued exposure to binary risk.

James Tissot, founder and author of Slack Capital, an independent research publication focused on uncovering asymmetric investment opportunities through high-conviction analysis, sees the emergence of eXoZymes (NASDAQ: EXOZ) as a different kind of biotech story.

He believes his investment case is less reliant on a single molecule or a clinical outcome. Tissot's thesis centers on eXoZymes' broader innovation platform, capable of advancing multiple assets through successive value-inflection points.

BEYOND THE BINARY

eXoZymes, a NASDAQ-listed biotechnology company, has built a next-generation, cell-free biomanufacturing platform intended to produce multiple high-value nutraceutical and pharmaceutical molecules while leveraging its underlying technology to advance these opportunities into increasingly de-risked assets with clear commercial pathways.

It is through this differentiated commercial approach that the author of Slack Capital believes eXoZymes is building a compounding flywheel designed to progressively create value for shareholders.

Tissot sees the flywheel concept as being driven by rapid development a compound's production pathway, advancing the asset to a meaningful value-inflection point, then commercialising it through the best-suited commercial structure, whether that be via a spin-out entity, joint-venture partnership or licensing agreement.

Each successful program can add further technical knowledge, platform data, partner relationships, commercial validation and capital back into the platform, supporting greater speed and capital efficiency in the development of subsequent molecules across the platform.

Alongside its established NCT, Cannabinoid and Santalene programs, eXoZymes has five additional compounds in rapid proof-of-concept evaluation. For Tissot, this growing portfolio provides an early indication of the repeatability underpinning the broader flywheel thesis.

Across his publicly available Slack Capital articles, he has described eXoZymes as having one of the most attractive risk-reward profiles he currently sees in the public markets. His conviction was further strengthened earlier this year by Cayman Chemical's successful third-party validation of eXoZymes' NCT cell-free process.

THE FIRST ROTATION

The 100-litre pilot run represented an important step in translating eXoZymes' technology beyond its own laboratory. Cayman Chemical successfully operated the transferred process at pilot scale, achieving approximately 99% reaction conversion and a 90% isolated yield, while producing 535 grams of NCT at 99.6% purity.

The process has continued to improve since. Subsequent optimisation increased NCT output per litre by approximately 67%, reduced reaction time by more than 80% and delivered a ten-fold increase in overall productivity. Based on eXoZymes' internal process-cost assessments, the estimated manufacturing cost equivalent has also fallen more than 100-fold from the earliest version of the process.

With these improvements in place, eXoZymes has selected global CDMO Curia as its commercial-scale manufacturing partner for NCT. Technology transfer and scale-up work is now underway across Curia's facilities in Spain and Italy, supporting the pathway toward larger-scale production ahead of a targeted market launch in the first half of 2027.

Importantly, the relationship could extend beyond NCT. The manufacturing knowledge, infrastructure and working relationship established through the program could support future compounds moving through the eXoZymes engine.

For Tissot, the company's first rotation of the flywheel is already underway. eXoZymes has now taken an internally identified opportunity from development and optimisation through third-party validation and into commercial scale-up, while additional compounds continue advancing behind it.

If eXoZymes can repeat this process across an expanding portfolio, the investment proposition would move further away from the traditional biotech reliance on a single make-or-break outcome. Shareholder value could instead become increasingly tied to the platform's ability to repeatedly advance and commercialise valuable molecular assets.

That outcome is not guaranteed. Scientific, manufacturing, regulatory and commercial risks remain, while the model has yet to be demonstrated across a broader portfolio.

But if eXoZymes can prove that repeatability, Tissot argues that each rotation of the flywheel could strengthen the next, allowing more high-value compounds to progress in parallel while creating successive opportunities for shareholder value appreciation.