Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
govck - out of interest (if you dont mind me asking) whats your portfolio position as a % invested in SNG? It may be that you're a glass half empty kind of person trying to think of any risks, but you're definitely quite cool on SNG's potential prospects.
It's been said by others, but SNG would be absolutely mad to have burnt through all their cash pile to stockpile treatments ahead of the trial results. Any kind of delays or unforeseen hurdles and RM has to go back to the market to ask for more cash to keep the lights on in that scenario.
RM has mentioned previously that to ramp up to large numbers of treatments per month they are going to need Gov assistance. If the trial results are anything like we hope then I think governments will clamouring to provide that help if it means they can get their supply of SNG treatments sooner.
Donnied - For every government there will still be a need to strategically stockpile a broad spectrum anti-viral even if Covid disappears tomorrow.
Would you rather your government ordered another dozen fighter jets or they spent the money on pandemic preparedness for the next virus that comes along?
Andy - see Floridajoe's post
Floridajoe - Yes
Sadly articles such as this one are going to continue to be utilised by the anti-vax crowd and dampen vaccination enthusiasm.
From a humanitarian perspective this is a great tragedy. From an SNG investment perspective it will ensure there will continue to be a great demand for a treatment to help those hospitalised by covid.
Doc83 - I agree, the recruitment drive in H2 gives me a huge amount of confidence. The new hires aren't just trying to get a step up in title at a smaller outfit - something is giving them confidence to leave their mostly Big Pharma low risk existing roles.
Share options alone wouldn't cut it as sufficient incentive - as no viable product in Q1 would mean the options would be worthless anyway.
Andy - I would argue that chat on here does impact PI sentiment. You're a PI and you go here to get a take on what other people think. What do you think other PI's do? It's either here, ADVFN or the reddit/telegram groups. If you google Synairgen or SNG this is the first site it takes you. With it being an AIM stock there aren't a great deal of other sources of info/opinion available.
I know you often focus on the potential risk and the worst case, but personally I'm more bullish. My view is that its not binary (pass/fail) but degress of success. Will it be close to P2 trial results or will it show efficacy but not staggeringly so due to the improvements in SOC.
For me it's impossible to determine an exit point until we have the results from Sprinter and indication of order sizes and our likely manufacturing ability for year 1.
Once we have the above information any exit strategies formulated now based on our current info will be totally redundant.
Yes I will be getting the booster in December for the following reasons:
- It reduces to some extent the risk of being infected and of passing it on to elderly relatives
- It reduces the symptoms and chances of hospitalisation and death
- it means holidays, travelling and generally living isn't a massive faff because you haven't conformed to the vaccination expectations of this country and others (whether you like them or not).
Yes agreed Andy - personally I'm not putting much weight in the £9.90 Numis low target. It was calculated well over a year ago and a hell of a lot has happened in the world since then. For it to have been calculated to the nearest 10p and vaccines/variants/pill treatments not to have had any impact makes me question its accuracy big time :)
Covid is going to be with us forever so there's no longer the need to attach the use of SNG on other illnesses such as flu to provide a route to future earnings "beyond covid" - although it all helps and adds to the investment case and ultimate SP.
NDN71 - I wouldn't be too concerned regarding admin/compliance/quality assurance - this is all handled by Parexel and is fundamentally what they do as a global clinical research company.
If sprinter results are mainstream newsworthy as expected, then the story will have a lot greater reach and get more attention in all the countries that participated in the trial. They can then all pat themselves on the back for saving their respective countries from covid and start placing their orders.
I guess because £10 (or £9.90) was the Numis target price given. Personally I won't be selling at £10 - though I think I'd have to top slice, since that kind of SP value would mean I was sitting on well over £2m profit! It'd be very hard to 'let it all ride' when its needed to buy a home and pay for the kids' education.
I'll be doing my exit price sums based on the level of efficacy the Sprinter trial shows and the amount of pre orders it generates. However, I'm expecting SNG to be acquired and I have my fingers crossed there are competitive bids to ensure true value is paid.
Its not even necessary to factor in COPD to the investment case in my opinion. Even if we assume that Pfizer's results are 100% accurate you have to remember the headline figures for effectiveness are based on treatment starting within 3 days of infection. Within 5 days of infection is still good but not 90%.
Anybody that gets mild symptoms on day 1 or 2 is unlikely to be rushing to a PCR centre and LFT's are unlikely to show a positive this early in the infection. One could also question how long it will take to get a result via PCR if everyone is piling into the centres with a tickly cough or a sniffly nose.
There will still be a great number of cases turning up at hospitals that are breathless and none of the pills work once you're at this stage. All SNG need to do is get decent results from SPRINTER and everything else is noise.
Will it reach the theoretical SP targets that were estimated for SNG last year of £100+? I would say unlikely now.
If SNG's trial shows decent efficacy will the company be worth £1Bn to £10Bn? Yes I think so - I'd say £4Bn+ (equivalent to an SP of at least £20)
alkin - it would be interesting if Polygon have started buying shares again today. Dont forget from the last TR1 on 26th October that it showed they had stopped all share acquisition since at least 21st October - they had switched to paying for CFD's instead to presumably increase the leverage on their capital.
I hope so, but I think more likely to happen by end of tomorrow. Volume today is very very low
GH - Good post. Do we know for sure that any other offers are better than the current likely buyer has put forward? Not that it matters significantly, but they could be keeping the buyer on their toes and not letting them think that they're the only game in town for EUA.
Whatever the offers are from other parties, it strengthens EUA's hand when any last minute negotiations at the 11th hour play out.
I agree with Oakleaf - the most likely reason is that they want to maximise their return by using leverage. If they'd tried to usethe same amount of capital to buy shares over the last few days then:
a) They would have to purchase the shares at a higher price, since their further purchasing would have pushed up the price
b) They would have a lot less shares than they have via the CFD since they would have had to acquire the underlying assets/shares, rather than just 'rent' them
My view is that they still view SNG as significantly undervalued with significant upside to come in the short term - therefore they have maximised their opportunity to pocket the upside by leveraging their capital.
I feel like they will be constrained by ability to supply rather than demand - until they are acquired. Based on Remdesivir pricing as a guide to assuming SNG will make £1000 per treatment course and that the short/medium term production aim (with government assistance) is in the region of at least 100K treatments manufactured per month, you can come up with some high level figures that are encouraging but dont feel unrealistic:
£1,000 Margin per Treatment
100000 Treatments per month
£1,200,000,000 Profit per annum
5 PE Ratio
£6,000,000,000 Market Cap
£30.00 Target SP
BruceJ - I think we saw an example of the price being affected on the A2 progression to P3 announcement day. Polygon's significant acquisition of 3 million more shares at a requested price of around 165p held the price there from 8.15am until market close. Yes they need the involvement of a MM but it is the II that instigates and funds the SP influence.