Who doesn’t dream about finding a stock just before it really takes off? Here comes the top performer of Australia’s ASX 200 benchmark index. A stock that has surged over 20x since last summer. And it’s not some questionable mining company — but a serious medical technology business. The company we are looking at today is set to improve and disrupt established procedures, benefitting patients and clinics. Was this 2,000% blast-off just the beginning?
Summary and key takeaways from today’s Weekly
– Australia’s top performer over the last year strikes big with +2,000% — and it is not a mining company.
– 4DMedical has a compelling story that will be interesting to watch.
– However, I had a Déjà vu with it.
Australia is widely known as a commodity-centric nation — and for good reasons.
Vast reserves of lithium, uranium, coal, oil, gas, and precious metals have created a long list of mining companies on the ASX 200.
However, there are more than just mining companies in Down Under. And, not every standout performer comes from the resources sector. Would you have asked me beforehand, I would have likely guessed it might be … a commodity stock.
Of course — wrong answer.
4DMedical (ISIN: AU0000095416, ticker: 4DX), a company many likely have never heard of before — including myself — has a cool +2,000% run behind it.
Since last summer by the way when it was still a penny stock.
I wanted to know what’s behind this monstrous surge. And, whether this was just an initial launch, potentially having kicked-off a compelling story for the next years.
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per 15 April 2026 market close – since August 2022
After the blast-off: rocketing higher or melting down?
Looking at the top-performing stocks over the last year in Australia’s benchmark index, we can see there are two companies with gains of more than 1,000%.
One of them is 4DMedical, which we are going to have a look at below.
I’ve found it astonishing, though, that the next ten companies after 4DX all surged more than 200% each — more than 5% of the index components. Most of them having ”energy”, “mining”, “mineral” or “resources” in their names.
And, that the first name I know of only comes in at rank 11, uranium miner Paladin Energy (ISIN: AU000000PDN8, ticker: PDN).
This was surprising for me.
Be it, now today’s topic.
4DMedical was founded in 2012 by Andreas Fouras, who remains CEO and leads the company as a passionate and visionary founder with c. 11% ownership.
At a current market cap of 3.7 billion AUD, this is a very substantial personal stake.
The company’s mission is to revolutionize cardiopulmonary imaging (heart, lungs, air and blood flow, etc.) by turning ordinary CT scans into highly detailed four-dimensional imaging maps — the source for the their name. 4DMedical operates as an asset-light, scalable, (in the future) high-margin software-as-a-service platform that uses advanced proprietary AI algorithms.
These 4D scans are functional ventilation and perfusion maps, meaning they aren’t just two-dimensional as we know them by showing only the lung structure from one perspective. Instead, they offer a holistic and dynamic view of how the lungs are actually working and how air and blood are flowing (or not).
One of the novelties and major advancements is this happens without giving patients contrast or radioactive tracers, making lung diagnostics faster, safer, and far more accessible for patients and hospitals worldwide.
Important: This software does NOT replace doctors.
Doctors remain essential. The AI software supports them by providing much better functional data. And it works on existing infrastructure.
What it aims to replace are legacy procedures: standard CT and nuclear V/Q scans (V/Q = air and blood flow in the lungs), which only show static anatomy, not how the lungs are actually working, respectively, which require inhaling and injecting radioactive tracers, extra appointments, longer wait times, higher radiation, and still deliver lower-resolution images.
With this revolutionary tech, the CEO has the humble goal to reach no less than 100% market share in the future, as publicly communicated.
The last twelve months were very eventful.
In the U.S., the FDA approved the flagship CT:VQ (the world’s first non-contrast V/Q solution), reimbursement was cleared, a major distribution partnership with medical behemoth Philips announced, rapid adoption at elite U.S. hospitals like Mayo and Stanford took place, plus two big capital raises strengthened the balance sheet.
All of these sent the stock on a +2,000% rocket ride from penny-stock levels.
Now the question… will this lung imaging story keep breathing fire — or are we about to see some familiar Deja-Vu?
When I researched 4DMedical, I was instantly reminded of another Australian company with a similar business that I have been following for many years now.
Pro Medicus (ISIN: AU000000PME8, ticker: PME) hasn’t made it onto the front pages of major publications. I stumbled over it in 2020, I guess, when it traded around 30 AUD. Barely known to the wider public, PME has been an absolute monster performer. Occasionally, I have posted something about it on twitter.
I never invested — and it felt like a huge missed opportunity.
“Huge” may be a clear understatement.
Over the last ten years, PME has been roughly a 100-bagger. Go back to May 2011 and it was a penny stock trading at just 0.25 AUD — delivering a 1,000-bagger over 15 years for anyone who bought then and held to the high.
But my main doubts all the time, centered on valuation, turned out to be valid.
From the high in last summer, PME lost 60%, and 40% in 2026 alone. Don’t tell this one below looks like a normal correction.
The parallels with 4DMedical are striking — and somewhat frightening.
Pro Medicus is a leading provider of AI-powered radiology imaging software. Its Visage 7 platform allows radiologists to read scans much faster and with better accuracy. The company revolutionized how large hospitals handle medical images by replacing slow, outdated systems with fast, cloud-based, AI-assisted solutions.
(Haven’t we heard that above?)
The moat of Pro Medicus is very strong: deep integration into hospital IT systems, long-term sticky software and cloud contracts, extremely high switching costs, plus heavy regulatory, certification, and bureaucracy barriers. In a hospital, you cannot ask ChatGPT to read an x-ray or MRI scan.
Accordingly, the business is extremely capital-light and high-margin.
It is scaling with size and adoption of its software, as costs are relatively fixed. Do you know any other business with gross margins of almost 100% and operating margins of 74%?
Pro Medicus has a formidable balance sheet with net cash, it is founder-led, and strongly growing. Sales and free cash flow are expanding somewhere around 30–40% annually, while margins are rising through scale.
It is a high-growth business.
The problem was that PME had insane valuation metrics.
For me, it was extremely risky, despite the stock having gone up for a log time. Seemingly only knowing one direction. Until something broke.
Please have a look yourself.
If you think the everybody’s darling Mag 7 stocks have high multiples, buckle up. PME at the top reached an enterprise value to sales multiple of 175x.
Sales and 175x — that’s not a typo.
The FCF multiple was more than 250x, offering a FCF yield of 0.4% for shareholders buying the high. If you want to tell someone about high expectations …
The bad news is, despite the 60% drop from its high, we are very far from a level where I would consider deploying capital into this name. We are still dealing with 50x sales and 70–80x FCF. Yes, the business is growing explosively, but does this not seem to be priced in to a large extent? The enterprise value is more than 13 billion AUD, while Pro Medicus generates sales of not even 0.3 billion AUD.
I could not comfortably own the stock at these metrics.
Which brings us back to 4DMedical.
We had the market cap of 3.7 billion AUD above. 4DMedical is heavily expanding and showing strong commercial momentum. CT:VQ is now live at six top-tier US academic medical centers, Europe received CE Mark approval in March 2026, opening another big market, and the company is scaling through its important partnership with Philips.
Under the Philips deal signed in late 2025, the medical giant actively sells and promotes CT:VQ across its extensive hospital network in North America. In return, Philips has committed to minimum orders worth around 15 million AUD across 2026 and 2027, providing 4DMedical with valuable revenue visibility and much faster market access.
Financially, the company is still in heavy investment mode (H1 FY26 revenue was 2.85 million AUD, no profits). The recent 150 million AUD capital raises have created a strong cash position, which should boost growth as reference sites convert into wider contracts and Philips minimum-order revenue kicks in.
But you will have read between the lines that I have some issues.
Where will sales exactly be? I don’t know. It depends on the rollout Progress, but also on more positive announcements beyond that. Adoption can be quicker, but also slower than thought. Even if sales come in at 50 million AUD over the next quarters — which likely is rather ambitious — we’d be dealing with a sales multiple of 70x.
Huge profits should not be expected, but this is not key at this stage.
But 70x sales is pricing in huge expectations. Even if they double next year, and double again thereafter, we’d still be talking about 35x and 17.5x — sales, not profits.
Interestingly, Pro Medicus provided a strategic 10 million AUD hybrid debt facility in 2025 to 4DMedical with distribution rights, giving PME upside exposure and a foot in the door. The businesses are highly complementary rather than competitive, which raises an interesting hypothetical: could PME eventually acquire 4DMedical to add functional lung imaging onto its Visage platform and accelerate adoption?
That remains to be seen.
But regarding 4DMedical as is, and even ignoring any similarities to Pro Medicus, I think the valuation is ambitious. Expectations are very high, and the company must now deliver. Making it more difficult, there is no formal guidance from management, except the aim to catch 100% of the market.
The tech is impressive and early traction visible, but 4DMedical faces steep challenges: long hospital sales cycles, slow adoption in the healthcare system, and execution risk with still tiny revenue. The biggest long-term threat is general AI that could commoditize functional CT analysis, offering similar insights for almost zero marginal cost. Progress is fast, and we do not even notice what will be in half a year. But changes are evolving.
On the pro side, 4DMedical has a first-mover advantage, strong patents, the Philips partnership, and high regulatory barriers to entry for competition. However, the valuation already prices in massive success — any delay or AI disruption could trigger a brutal de-rating.
With this, I am putting this ticker on my watchlist, because the story is interesting. Not only from an investment perspective, but also for the medical progress itself.
Conclusion
Australia’s top performer over the last year strikes big with +2,000% — and it is not a mining company.
4DMedical has a compelling story that will be interesting to watch.
However, I had a Déjà vu with it.
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