The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode with London Stock Exchange Group's Chris Mayo has just been released. Listen here.
Brilliant thread everyone. So informative and constructive. Dont forget a month or so the govmt published a document on tech developments. 5 tests from 4 companies were mentioned as at the leading edge. 2 of them Avacta's - the LFD and BAMS. Mapp also mentioned for its mass spec test. I had though Avacta was going its own route for validation with BAMS but stand corrected - its clear they are going their own route and down the Falcon route.
Mentioned on here that every hospital will be using this. I think on top of that it would be a good purchase for any institution, business or organisation that has people needing to be present in proximity to one another at scale. Prisons, large schools, universities etc. They could actually not just supplement and over time supplant reliance on PCR but actually to some fractional degree lessen the reliance that needs to be placed on fast tests.
I have TILS RorkesDrift. It needs an asterix because its demerged and holders at the ex entitlement date might be sitting on an amount equivalent to something like 50 per cent of the TILS share price. So overall its probably up about 20 per cent.
Hants makes a good point. The other point is that what you call the market is simply an aggregation of investors all with their own variant perspectives, levels of knowledge and objectives. Consequently it is not tje rational singular force that you might ve implying. Indeed, some of the vest investors take advantage of this very fact. Selling when levels of complacency are high and buying when stocks as a whole have been driven thoroughly down by fear. That is one way of making outsized gains. Another is choosing stocks where the extent of opportunity and/ or level of potential to realise that opportunity have been greatly underestimated. That is the case here.
Anyone who believes everything is priced rationally should not pick stocks and simply buy a tracker.
Ten pounds by Jan at latest on the back of good validation results, big contract with govmt revealed, interest from other governments and further scaling of manufacturing. And if these things come to pass keep any top slicing to the absolute minimum. That' s because it will take months of new contracts for further manufacturing and sales before the invedtment community at large fully cottons on to the value. And after that even more time before they realise that Avacta will is in poll position because of affimers and cash pile to turn into a global diagnostics leader. That' s even without accounting for the slower burn realisation of its therapy division potential is factored in. Unless you have ro l, you dont want to be selling the bulk or all of your holdings for a tenner in January only to that grimace while you pay twenty or more a fe months later.
Humans not learning about the perils of intensive farming and exploitation of animals and birds. Needs to be put a stop to by governments. That aside we need a new generation of DNA vaccines to come through, such as the one Scancell have in development. These have the capacity to handle mutation.
The guardian are reporting that all mink in Denmark have been culled. 200 people infected with a mink related strain of covid that could alao get into animals like Badgers and weasels.
Potential impact on the effectiveness of current generation of vaccines was discussed.
If you are look at the pictures you can see the animals in cages which also raises a question of when are we going to lean that intensive animal and bird farming is like a petri dish for the development of viruses that can then cause havoc in the human population.
Some confusion on the boards about who is validating what. Just to be clear we are not relying on Condor for validation.
BAMS was waiting for month to get validated in Condor and probably because of this Avacta has decided to get it validated outside. Results should be expected in December. This is no reflection on its quality since the government was only recently earmarking mass spectrometry tests as its route to about doubling its lab test capacity and was talking up much more frequent testing of healthcare workers. One of the Bidstats docs posted yesterday highlighted mass spectrometers as being purchased. They are costly to buy but they pay back that outlay very quickly as the per test cost is around a tenner only whereas PCR is around 50. This will sell well in many countries and is a baseline for both maintaining and potentially doubling our sp in the next year.
LFD - we are hitting the 3 month point on a tech transfer process with BBI that, according to its website, normally takes 3-4 months. The process entails producing a batch of 10000 tests which will be used to complete professional and end user validations 2 and 4 weeks after respectively. Does not involve Condor and means we should have tests for professional use between late November and late December and for end user use between early December and early January. So the public at large and we as shareholders can expect a nice pre xmas gift. There is always talk that we will miss the boat but this is nonsensical. Hopefully r rate will be lower by December but even if it is we need regular effective cheap testing of the whole population, more regular testing of people in settings where distancing has been an issue and a great deal of additional testing to open up the hospitality, sport, leisure and tourism sectors more fully.
Ukrtc antibody test is dirt cheap to manufacture. May even be sub 2 quid from memory. Not sure why this should cost much if anything more to make. The manufactuers will want a quid or so a test profit and Avacta will want at least a few even if these are ultimately going to sell in the billions. But i think all of this makes a figure of 6- 8 quid a test feasible potentially for a very large volume contract. Manufacturing constraints at the moment suggest that could yield close to a billion profit in a year. But if its a gold standard lfd demand from uk alone might be enough to double or treble that should sufficient extra manufacturing capacity be contracted.
Triphop many of us think that they are doing something big with Avacta but it could be condition al on the lfd performing within the expected parameters in validation. So starting validation is a very significant event for the sp and passing it with flying colours is not just significant but transformative because it means the govmt will buy 100s of millions and if they dont for some perverse reason other governments will. Many other manufacturers will want a piece of the pie too in that scenario
Yes they could make that time frame if they can get the tech transfer complete in next two weeks. The info on validation was from the presentation that followed quarterly results I believe. Presentation may be on the Avacta website
Gemstar that quote about BAMS was from my post. The govmt sat on the test for months and then we suddenly found in late October that mass spec test validation was now a priority for Condor and they were ready to get on with it. So I approximated that we should get it validated through by mid Nov. One can only surmise that Condor was actually still not ready properly so Avacta took matters into their own hands. Validation now likely to complete in December I would guess.
For those who don't already know, the current iteration of LFDs that the government are buying are sufficiently good on specificity but there are a number of reasons why they are not great overall and why Avacta is likely to do better.
The first relates to manufacturability, availability of materials and input costs. Potteryexpert in his post below shows many of the advantages that Avacta has on these fronts.
The second relates to sensitivity. The character of affimers means they bring better sensitivity than tests using antibodies. Avacta's Elisa test picks up virus loads 500 times smaller than a typical competitor test. That is likely to translate across to an LFD that is capable at picking up much lower virus concentrations than current LFDs and thus pick up people who are both pre and a symptomatic much more effectively.
We know that those who are pre or a symptomatic can still be infectious so the more effective a test is at picking them up the more effective it is going to be as a tool to quell the r rate, all other things being equal. The tests that the Government is currently purchasing are being touted by their manufactures as immensely sensitive - some quote rates above 90 per cent. However, these claims should be taken with a pinch of salt. The so-called innova tried and tested test is advertised on its literature as not suitable for use in the first five days of infection which may imply that its mid 90s rate of sensitivity was only achieved by cherry picking samples from those who were at least 5 days into their infection. That alone makes its purchase questionable. We need a test that will be excellent at picking up people even toward the back end of day 1 of infection which is when people start to become infective. The Abbott test purchased by the US government also ran into problems. And other tests eg produced by SD biosensor are also merely adequate.
The third issue is that unlike the current tests the Avacta test will not use a swab. DoH has rightly noted that swabs pose a safety issue and this makes them pretty unsuitable for home based tests. The Government's plan to allow them to be used at home could cause significant adverse clinical incidents and thereby undermine confidence in the testing programme and generate liability issues. It is also uncomfortable or even painful to use a swab and many people will be reluctant to use it at all or regularly, including many children. This will seriously hamper the value of swab based tests for mass screening and r rate reduction. There is also a double digit error rate in swabbing - which is another reason why the current iteration of tests is going to much less effective than it might cursorily seem to be.
sopportunity.Safy - very trashy one sided post about BAMS. Have you actually read up tje opportunity because it sounds like you are ill informed or misinforming.