Indeed. Well, pension companies will very soon be under heavy pressure to increase their equity weightings. It doesn’t take much of a side stream from pension funds towards small caps to create significant movement in small-cap share prices.
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At the same time, however, Murto—speaking for Varma—states that these funds will mostly be invested abroad. I don’t believe pension companies currently see Optomed as the kind of investment target worth sinking more money into - there are better options available.
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At least today there doesn’t seem to be much desire to buy or sell from anyone… It’s even strangely quiet. Has anyone looked into who was behind that block trade on Friday?
It’s T+2, so it’s not worth asking about Friday’s trades just yet. Furthermore, you can only get information over the phone by inquiring by name, so you might identify the seller with a couple of questions, but checking for the buyer would likely be quite laborious. Imagine the clerk’s agony when someone starts with “Aaltonen, Aapo; Aaltonen, Aaro…” 
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Ubetec’s COO Niklas Bondestam was active in a conference panel where Ubetec clearly positioned itself as an expert on the Finnish licensing market. Their marketing message is becoming significantly more aggressive.
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Screenings in China just keep on going:
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I have long been of the opinion that Topcon would acquire Optomed, but this view has not materialized so far.
There is a lot of expertise here, so I would be interested to hear views on why this hasn’t happened. Or why it might not necessarily happen even at these valuation levels.
My own thinking is that at the current valuation, Optomed looks relatively cheap considering the company holds FDA clearances for both the camera and the camera+AI solution. Roughly speaking, one could think that developing something similar from scratch would take years and significant investment if, for example, Topcon wanted to enter the US market with a handheld camera.
I am aware that FDA clearance does not yet mean a business breakthrough; value is only created through commercialization, where there can still be significant uncertainty. Although a large player has an advantage in these areas, it doesn’t automatically guarantee success either.
Is it primarily about the lack of commercial proof, meaning from a buyer’s perspective the risk is still too high and the market is not yet mature?
When there is so much talk in the industry about AI-assisted preventive screening, this overall situation feels a bit contradictory.
It would be interesting to hear how others see the situation and whether there are typical signals in cases like this regarding the stage at which large players actually get active with acquisitions.
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I have been of exactly the same opinion for a long time; Topcon is the most likely buyer. A handheld camera is the piece they are missing. More specifically, an FDA-approved handheld camera.
If it were already clear that this will become a major business with the handheld camera, an offer would likely already be on the table. In my opinion, the lack of an offer says more about the stage of commercialization than the valuation. The moment Topcon activates is the same moment it is fully convinced of the breakthrough of handheld technology. Of course, Topcon isn’t the only option, but it seems the most likely. Currently, Optomed is a loss-making company undergoing a transformation from a device manufacturer to a service provider, and its financial position is being questioned. Additionally, the company has non-core software business, which certainly affects the assessment.
Topcon and other potential buyers are willing to pay a higher price once the potential is better proven than it is today.
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I would say that from an acquisition perspective, there are two problems:
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As the previous poster noted, a buyer would rather pay a premium for a “de-risked” situation where the product’s commercial success has been proven, than a slightly lower price for potential that is waiting to be realized and which might still require further financing after the deal.
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Optomed has a very, very fragmented ownership structure, and among the larger shareholders, few would likely be “in the green” even if the purchase price was +100% of today’s valuation. Therefore, there are significant risks to completing a transaction simply from the perspective of offer acceptance.
As I see it, the company has been funded with 65 million euros over its history, while its market cap is currently 31 million. If the business were at a level that justified, for example, a 100 million valuation, the prerequisites for a deal would be significantly higher than they are now. However, there is an extremely long way to go at the current level of performance, and I do not believe this will change under the current management.
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Excellent assessment. That is exactly the case; the shareholder base is very fragmented and large, prominent individual owners are missing. This, in turn, has created room for poor performance from both the board and the operational management. The Chairman of the Board has been at the helm for a very long time, and to put it bluntly, the journey hasn’t been particularly successful.
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More on pension company investments: Ilmarinen ja OP Pohjola sijoittavat 300 miljoonaa suomalaisiin yrityksiin | HS.fi
“This is not about early-stage startup funding, as the minimum size of the funding package is three million euros. The program is aimed at more established companies seeking international growth.”
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Hopefully this will give a boost to the trading. Currently, if funds aren’t dumping the price, then the bots are swinging it however they want… constant churning of one or two shares and the price stays flat. Now we really need to get information out regarding customers / deals. The Umass case is already from 1.5 years ago, and quite a small kiosk is used as a reference on Optomed’s own social media. Where did the mentioned big customers and Big Pharma, among others, disappear to?
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If it were already clear that this will become a major business with handheld cameras, an offer would likely be on the table already. In my opinion, the lack of an offer says more about the stage of commercialization than about the valuation. The moment Topcon activates is the same moment they are fully convinced of the breakthrough in handheld technology.
Thank you Due_Diligence and Jorge_B for the good and interesting answers.
This is exactly the core issue that I’ve started to mull over myself, which is why I brought the topic up again. At this stage, hardly anyone questions the handheld technology itself anymore. A large number of studies have been reviewed here where Optomed’s camera has achieved impressive results. Aurora AEYE’s FDA process is behind them, regulation looks favorable, and reimbursement is—at least for now—in order in the US.
So, in practice, the biggest remaining uncertainty is commercialization. It hasn’t progressed very rapidly, but this is precisely the point where a player like Topcon would have a clear advantage. Established channels, customer relationships, and market understanding. They aren’t an outside buyer; they are deep within this ecosystem and likely see very accurately which direction the US market and screening models are headed.
Wouldn’t now be the optimal buying window? Regulatory risk has largely vanished, commercialization is not yet “proven,” and the price hasn’t escaped yet.
If that commercial proof arrives, the situation changes quickly: interest grows, there could be multiple buyers, and the price level rises. At that point, a player like Topcon is no longer buying an “option,” but has to compete for a more mature asset that would fit anyone.
To put it bluntly, the biggest risk for a buyer isn’t necessarily buying too early, but rather that someone else gets there first. Especially when the alternative is to build it themselves (a slow, expensive, and uncertain path).
So, if Topcon didn’t see any near-term potential here at all, it would be a clear red flag for us Optomed shareholders as well. But if they see even a moderate probability of a breakthrough, moving right now could be rational.
And a final note: I don’t particularly hope for a delisting myself, but purely as a strategic scenario, I wouldn’t consider it far-fetched at all at this point.
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I think AEYE Health’s communication has clearly changed in recent months.
Previously, the emphasis was on FDA clearances, studies, and algorithm performance. Now, both AEYE’s corporate account and CEO Zack Dvey-Aharon are constantly talking about AI adoption, workflows, reimbursement models, and scaling.
This is interesting because communication in health tech companies often shifts at this stage: first, the technology is proven, then regulatory approvals are obtained, and finally, the focus moves to implementation and driving sales growth.
In AEYE’s latest posts, the same theme recurs: the bottleneck is no longer the accuracy of the AI, but how screening is integrated into primary care visits. This aligns well with the value proposition of the Aurora AEYE solution.
I’m not claiming this proves significant sales growth yet, but the tone of communication looks more like a commercial scaling phase than a technology validation phase.
From Optomed’s perspective, it will be interesting to see if this starts to reflect in device sales, software business, or new customer contracts in the coming quarters. At the very least, marketing messages suggest that AEYE is now heavily focused on accelerating adoption. Any thoughts/reflections/views from others regarding this?
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This is currently a matter of cold calling and maintaining the sales pipeline. The sales math will take care of the rest.
Capex deals are also needed, and a certain portion of them will eventually flow into AEYE’s ‘time-based billable revenue’.
The Q1 sales halt due to funding uncertainties in diabetic retinopathy screening was an unfortunate event independent of Optomed, and now all that remains is faith in the year-end recovery and growing the device installed base. Q2 may still be soft, as orders will only reach delivery and invoicing after the summer, during Q3. The full-year guidance stands. It was given with a dose of grim realism from the start.
In general, there is a lot of talk about AI right now. There is little concrete substance in the talk, but Aurora AEYE is literally a product of the future here and now. For this reason, sharpening the messaging and emphasizing sales into primary care workflows is only a good thing. A year ago, based on trade fairs, the target group seemed to be ophthalmologists in specialized care, for whom AEYE is a potential competitor; there are more barriers to sale there, as resistance to change is hard-coded into healthcare structures.
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ESG reporting and major US customers.
In connection with the Big Pharma (AstraZeneca) case, Optomed announced that BP requires this ESG report. Isn’t it likely that this same requirement also applies to large US healthcare players, such as CVS Health?
In other words, this could be yet another bottleneck preventing major US operators from scaling up more broadly beyond the pilot phase.
Once Optomed gets that ESG report completed, could we see the “ketchup bottle effect” (a sudden surge) in the US as well, in addition to the BP announcement?
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Once again, some strange price action was observable. Trading volumes were very low, and suddenly the price started racing upwards and then—bam… the ask side (myyntilaita) was flooded with sell orders, bringing the rally to a halt and pushing it back down to the €1.45 level. The robots are unfortunately very well-tuned, and since there is no news coming out from the company / AEYE Health, it’s just this kind of dragging along day after day. Perhaps wonder is starting to creep in that for over two years, they’ve been the only AI + handheld, yet apparently there is nothing new in the “pipeline” regarding the FDA application process either. Is there a real reason for this, or is the market just not taking off?
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