Paxman (PAX.ST)
Creating a new category within cancer care
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I would look back on that summer as the last year being childish, so spoiled by mommy that I didn’t even make my own bed. It was time for me to get ready for my 8 months of military service. I was 19 years old and nervous to enter my conscription service within the Swedish military. Only thing left to do was of course to shave off my blondish hair and have that buzz cut one expects when in the military. Very unused to my new short hairstyle I peered in the mirror and when the light hit right on my scalp, I realized to my horror, that you could hint a thinning of the hair in a pattern all too well known to me. Got damnit, I’m getting dads baldness and it showing already when I’m 19! I haven’t even left my teens yet, I’m not ready to get bald! I put my feelings about the topic aside for the time being, nothing I could do about it anyway. Machinegun shooter here we come!
A few years later in Uni that brewing baldness did really bother me though, I had never really been a vain person but I realized my hair was important to me, it was somehow a big part of my identity. I went online and decided to find a solution, that solution for me was Rogaine, which I kept using for over 15 years - and it really worked. It had some side effects, which is another story but all in all it was worth it. I could spend my 20’s and most of my 30’s with a nice blonde set of hair and only now in my 40’s am I sporting the bald look, everything has it’s time and place and 40’s is OK to be bald. That’s how I felt at least.
This investment thesis hinges upon the very same feelings I felt but in a different context. This is about how you feel about losing your hair when you are already down and going through something incredible hard - cancer. Most ladies dread this and it’s only when the hair starts coming off after 2 - 3 chemotherapy sessions that many really feel sick. You feel sick when you look sick. Paxman has pioneered a solution which gives the patient a high chance of retaining much of your hair through chemo treatments. Quite a few patients can go through their full chemo treatment with only minor hair loss. This product is obviously not needed to fight the cancer but it’s still darn important because how you feel going through one of your worst periods in your life, it matters, it really does.
When I started to learn more about Paxman and what they have been doing these past 25 years, I’m actually very surprised that offering this service at least to all female cancer patients should be standard of care in all developed markets at least, but it really isn’t. In a few places like the UK it is common (Paxman is listed in Sweden but is a UK company and penetrated their home market well). Paxman is on a journey to make it a standard option offered to all.
Working with cancer treatment centers to offer scalp cooling and insurance companies to cover it, has been a very long journey. So long that Paxman’s largest competitor didn’t make it and was in 2025 purchased on the cheap by Paxman. This has created an interesting situation where things are finally falling in place in the US from regulatory perspective (to improve reimbursement of scalp cooling), at the same time Paxman just gobbled up its only significant competitor and is effectively running a near monopoly, especially in some markets. The TAM is large for Paxman, if they can pull off to scale this product further, the rewards could be massive. Scaling in Paxman’s case mostly means how much the already installed machines are used, so in my write-up below I will focus quite a bit on that utilization bit.
Hope you like this investment idea as I think it’s one of the absolutely most interesting microcap ideas out there, as there is both a short term catalyst for revaluation, but investment story also holds as a very long term compounder, if they just keep executing as they done in the past. As usual I leave you with a slide deck with all thoughts about the company for you to flip through at your perusal.
