I still remember the first time I started investing in FTSE shares over a decade ago. Mostly because my first £1,000 investment was a tremendous success, more than doubling in value in the space of a few months, allowing me to buy my first car.
But the memory is also vivid for another reason: I mistook luck for skill, and proceeded to make some terrible, misguided decisions that sent me back to square one.
What happened?
In early 2014, I made my first investment in an emerging biotech group called Oxford Biomedica, now known as OXB (LSE:OXB). Why? Because I read a news article that the firm was developing a novel gene and cell-therapy platform for drug development.
Looking back, this ‘due diligence’ was hardly up to par. And I had no clue about the dangers of investing in young biotech businesses – this will be relevant again in a moment.
Fortunately, my investment proved to be near-perfect timing. A few months later, OXB’s LentiVector platform proved to be a massive success, enabling management to secure a landmark commercial deal with Novartis. The result? OXB shares surged from around 100p per share to over 600p on a split-adjusted basis.
So what did I do with all my winnings (beyond buying a red second-hand Renault Clio)? I, of course, piled everything into another young early-stage biotech business called ValiRx.
After 12 months, I lost almost 90%, at which point I sold my shares in dismay and decided maybe I wasn’t Warren Buffett after all. And by the way, ValiRx shares are still down 99.9% today.
Lessons learned
The most obvious lesson isn’t to invest in a risky biotech group with no revenue, no products, and massive capital expenditures ahead. But the more valuable teaching is to recognise and understand why OXB succeeded where ValiRx failed.
OXB, while still risky, had a unique product that large biotech groups’ research cell therapies desperately needed. This provided a valuable and powerful moat to the firm that has since propelled it from a tiny penny stock to a £775m enterprise today.
Having realised this, I eventually invested in OXB again in 2018. And alongside other more intelligent and informed investment decisions, I recovered from my losses and have since propelled my wealth to fantastic highs.
Is OXB still a buy in 2026?
Today, OXB focuses almost exclusively on its LentiVector platform as a gene therapy contract development and manufacturing organisation. In simple terms, it helps other biotech companies develop and manufacture their own treatments.
The move massively de-risked the business, since OXB’s success no longer depends on successful and expensive clinical trials, it gets paid either way. And since viral vector manufacturing is extraordinarily complex, the company continues to benefit from the advantage that kicked off its journey – enormous barriers to entry.
But while cell and gene therapy is a structural megatrend within the biotech sector, it’s important not to understate the risks. OXB’s still unprofitable, its revenue’s dependent on a small number of major pharmaceutical clients, and the balance sheet’s started accumulating significant debt.
So is OXB a promising FTSE growth share opportunity in 2026? Yes. Is it risky? Absolutely. That’s why I’ve only allocated 1.5% of my portfolio to the business.
