Member Info for AlfredoTupper

That’s a shame oldbutnotwise. I hope you find somewhere exciting for the money. I think a good sale of one of their portfolio companies will spark a revival and there are enough positives for me to sit tight. Though this is how I feel at the moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzTnINFdwuE

Did they let you know that Sense had been sold back in February barchid? I can’t find an RNS on that one. Maybe they only release good news ; -)

I’d like to send Scharnhorst in to stir things up a little, but he has retired to the Gironde. Ran out of German ammunition apparently.

Positive updates from Canaccord and Singer as usual. It would be nice if they could lift the share price for a change.

There were potential massive rewards with Sense Biodetection barchid and I wouldn’t disagree with the purchase at a venture capital level, but the risk/reward profile was all wrong for a direct investment in the portfolio. They’re supposed to sift out the best investments before going in with the portfolio and that 1% stake was out of character, especially as they were getting into bed with Koch Industries who gave MERC a good shafting. Koch’s stake controlled the fate of the company and I bet they came out of the debacle with the tech at peanuts for them. Another example of US investors pulling limeys’ pants down.

My opinion is that MERC were using portfolio money to try to prop up a VC dud.

You neglected to mention they’d already invested £250k on YGEN shares at 15.7p so they will make a loss on their YGEN investment despite the rise to half a penny today. They’d already written the investment down in their books so in the current year it will appear as a profit when the deal is done, though only adds about 1% to NAV. Hardly worth the 25% rise today but that’s the market and you take your chance. As for Evans being a canny stock picker, IIGs performance for quoted investments was posted on advfn:

LST listed at 10p now down to 1.05p

MSYS 0.1p down to 0.0065p

EVG 8p down to 3.2p (good performance for Evans)

KMK 15p down to 5p

YGEN 15.7p down to 0.5p

STX 30p down to 6.8p

POLX 60p down to 24.5p

MTPH bought at 28.5p, rescue funding effectively wiped out shareholders, delisted

Looks to me like he couldn’t hit a cow’s backside with a banjo. With IIG the question is how much do you trust the NAV? It’s mostly due to unquoted investments. All their quoted picks have bombed but the unquoteds stay on the books at cost unless there is a corporate action eg. funding round to modify the price. Barge pole job for me.

If you managed to read any of Parts 1 to 4 thank you for your attention. I'll leave consideration of Part 5, the current placing, to you. My feeling, reading through the background to this placing, is that the wording employed, hopefully to part you from your hard earned cash, has a familiar ring to it.
There is lots of information freely available on company performance in RNS releases, expanded in company reports and shareholder circulars. While the past is not a guide to the future, Omega certainly has a clear and consistent track record. My opinion is that the performance of the company and its directors has been disgraceful for years. I think the share price history and revolving door of directors support my view. Jag was at the company for all the placings I've discussed so I'd find it hard to think of their current CEO as a new broom.

In 2020 Omega raised gross proceeds of £10.5m by Placing, Subscription and Open Offer 0f 27.5m shares at 40p.
“The Fundraising will allow the Group to exploit opportunities the Company has identified with COVID-19 testing, to scale up manufacturing, to undertake work to improve the margin of its VISITECT® CD4 products and to expand its lateral flow product portfolio with products which are complementary to its VISITECT® CD4 products. Omega intends to seek opportunities to build a strong position in the global health diagnostic market by using its existing skill set and experience with lateral flow devices. Furthering these opportunities will allow the Company to continue delivering on its mission to improve human health and well-being through innovative diagnostic tests and global partnerships.”

COVID-19 - Lateral Flow Testing £3m Hmm
COVID-19 - ELISA Testing £1.1m Hmm
Cryptococcal meningitis £2.7m Hmm
And TB-LAM tests

Repay overdraft £1m

Working Capital £2.3m here it is again

I can’t be bothered repeating anything else from the company on this one as it’s just the usual guff.
Seeing a pattern yet?

In 2018, Omega had restructured its business by amalgamating the trading operations of its four UK companies into one entity, Omega Diagnostics Ltd. “This was a busy year for restructuring” (another one).
Two raises were carried out in 2019. The first was subscription only to a small number of ‘significant’ shareholders, the second a subscription and placing. In total around £2.3 million was raised through the issue of about 23 million new ordinary shares at a price of 10p.
The proceeds of the fundraising were to be used for the ubiquitous working capital purposes “whilst the Board continues its strategy to realise value in the short-term in-line with its strategic review” and to continue the commercialisation of both versions of the VISITECT® CD4 test ie. the 350 test and the more sensitive 200 test.
Colin King, CEO of Omega Diagnostics, commented: "We are pleased with the support shown from our existing shareholders as the Company progresses with its Strategic Review. These funds will help with working capital as the Group looks to exploit the opportunity available to them surrounding VISITECT® CD4 testing at the point-of-care level with the aim of helping people living with HIV globally."
OUTCOME The company flagged sales of the 350 test to Nigeria but they didn’t transpire and they don’t talk about it anymore. Still waiting for lift-off of the 200 test.

...unsurprisingly, out the door.

The hat came round again in June 2017 with 18m shares issued to raise over £3m at 18p to "accelerate the Group's growth plans." “We believe this will provide us with a solid foundation for future growth in shareholder value.”

New target: “confident Visitect CD4 test will launch in late calendar year 2017”
OUTCOME: OOPS
Over 4 years after that target date, there are still no meaningful revenues.

The Board ‘helpfully’ identified a number of opportunities which could help to accelerate growth.
It’s worth examining them in turn to compare what the board said with what happened.

Cunning Plan: Increase the number of allergens in the Allersys product range from 41 to 100 over the next four years. "The Company believes that it has made good progress and the Directors believe that once the Company gets beyond the contractual process, the sales and marketing teams of both organisations will be capable of making a success of the Company's allergy products."
OUTCOME: ABANDONED

Cunning Plan: Fund certain identified investment opportunities for Allergodip. The enhanced product will be targeted at developing countries given its ease of use and low cost application. The Company has identified a partner company in China which believes the market size in China to be 5 million tests alone.
OUTCOME: ABANDONED

Cunning Plan: Accelerate the pipeline of launching a range of Rapid Diagnostic Tests ("RDTs") to two or three per year to include tests for Syphilis, Dengue, S.typhi, Leptospirosis and Brucella.
OUTCOME: WHERE ARE THEY?

Cunning Plan: manufacturing facility in Pune, India, is now fully validated with current capacity for 6 million RDTs per annum
OUTCOME: PUNE FACTORY CLOSED AND ABANDONED

VISITECT® Malaria has now been CE-marked.
OUTCOME: ABANDONED

Increase FoodPrint® traction in the USA by increasing sales and marketing resource, developing product enhancements that meet the US lab environment and investing into more automated manufacturing capacity.

Jul 2020 The US continues to present challenges. Our current distribution partner had experienced financial issues, and, as such, we decided to terminate that agreement.

This is what the chairman had to say a year later.

“As Chairman I am extremely conscious of the level of criticism levelled at the Board in terms of the underperformance of the business. This level of performance was not borne out of fecklessness but out of circumstances and a recognition, perhaps belatedly, that we were not sufficiently focused for the resources we had available to us.
As a Board we fully understand our responsibilities and recognise the need to deliver value to shareholders particularly in light of the placing price of the fundraise in July last year. The failure to deliver against that plan is both visible and painful but every problem creates its own opportunity and rather than buckling under that pressure we have addressed the issues head on.”

A few months later he was, unsurprisi

I’m copying some articles kindly hosted by Green Richard on his bulletin board thread. They might be of interest to wavering Omega voters as they explore previous funds raised and outcomes. For information, current CEO Jag joined the group in 2011. In the last 9 years they burnt through four raises and, not surprisingly to long term observers at least, they need a fifth at 5p
Part 1: 2013
Way back in May 2013, Omega raised £4m issuing 23.5m shares by placing and subscription at 17p.
Money raised was to be spent on two product lines:

1. Scale-up in production and roll-out of Visitect CD4 test

OUTCOME Still no meaningful Visitect CD4 sales.

Some hope was raised a couple of years ago - “The VISITECT® CD4 350 test is currently approved by the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Health for inclusion in the national HIV algorithm in Nigeria. Potential orders have been delayed due to COVID-19 outbreak and the Company's distributor estimates further progress in late summer 2020.”
They don’t talk about that anymore.

2. As part of the Company's expansion plans, it intended to use proceeds to continue the implementation of its allergy instrumentation strategy. Omega signed an exclusive long-term global distribution agreement with Immunodiagnostic Systems Limited ("IDS") for its range of allergy assays. The ongoing investment to increase the allergen menu was supported by a £1.8 million R&D grant secured from Scottish Enterprise in 2016. IDS commercially launched Omega's allergy range in March 2019.

OUTCOME Abandoned

The Group announced on 9 June 2020 that it was stopping on-going development of the allergy product range after a careful and thorough analysis of the best use of the Company's capital, people and assets, in the context of changes in underlying assumptions for the allergy business and having decided to focus development activities in other areas. Under IAS36, the Company recognised an impairment to the carrying value of the intangible allergy assets, leading to a net exceptional loss of £7.71 million for the year ending 31 March 2020.

The CEO at the time was Andrew ‘lifestyle’ Shepherd who said:
"We are delighted to have received the support of investors for the next phase in Omega's development through this oversubscribed fundraising. We believe that CD4 represents a unique product that satisfies an urgent and unmet clinical need and has the potential to transform the way HIV is treated in developing countries. We are also confident that our work with IDS to develop allergy tests on the IDS-iSYS platform will generate value for shareholders."

Urgent need back in 2013??? Hard lines for HIV sufferers that Burnett Institute licensed their test to Omega.

Shepherd failed. Replacement CEO King failed. Evans chairman failed. Replacement blended in with wallpaper, then failed. FD Harbinson failed in India, Germany, US England and Scotland but managed to profit from covid by cashing in options while the share price was being ra