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It’s a pretty risky bet in my opinion. I like the look of it and the technology but too many unknowns for my liking to increase any further at the moment. Sold a few at 16.5p, would reinvest that if it fell a little lower. My main concerns are poor management and it’s still not certain this technology works yet. A new concern I had the other day was how valuable IP is when it comes down to national defence. The ‘global market’ (estimated at £500m per annum) for this technology may be just Western countries and their allies. I can’t see countries such as China and Russian obeying IP laws when it comes to national defence. Didn’t the Russians reportedly steal the Oxford vaccine? Many countries would probably do the same with this technology. However as we saw the othe month with the takeover of radlen there’s a lot of valuable IP here that isn’t being fully exploited by the current management. Hopefully with the continuous slide in the share price the board will be looking to make a positive announcement regarding the biological detector soon. This share price is so volatile I can see it being anywhere between 10-40p by the end of the year

I’d agree there’s a lot of shareholders bailing out right now. But if you look at Kromeks history they all bail back in again when the tide changes equally as fast. There’s a lot of news around the detector about to be released “serious discussions with multiple governments” is what the ceo said a while back. Eventually something will be announced regarding the biological detector. Remember zero sales of the detector are included in this year’s forecasts for Kromek. Any positive news regarding this on top of previous unexpected contracts could see this spike dramatically up again. When it does ST will be on hand to give the share price extra rocket fuel. The question is not if but when sales of this detector will be announced. At which point there will be yet again another spike. 15p doesn’t seem a big enough bargain for me to buy more at the moment, nor do I want to sell any more at this price. Just got to hold for the bio detector announcement. Very frustrated to see the board members not making any significant buys at this point.

By flying blind I mean whatever announcements Kromek make aren’t believed, comprehensively ignored and considered irrelevant by the market.

Only absolutely proven hard facts will shift this share price up I feel.

Until that point this share price is flying blind, losing altitude rapidly and going to end up crashing. On the other hand should good news be announced (ie the detector works and here are loads of orders for it) the share price will boom in a day - and Simon Thompson will be pouring petrol on that boom making it a remarkable opportunity. However I find the more I learn about Kromek the more I lose confidence in Kromek. What to do what to do...

Skid, with such an undemanding valuation and what seems like a steady flow of new contracts, with the hope of the biological pathogen detector on top. I feel like there may be some promise here. The BoDs must release they are in the last chance saloon now. They’ve got away with another £13m funding round based on hopes of the biological pathogen detector. Surely they’ve got to be focused on making a profit without tapping the market again.

They’ve pretty much promised this pathogen detector works. It concerns me that without the hope of the pathogen detector they wouldn’t have secured the £13m in the last funding round. This point is making me increasingly worried as delays are made regarding the commercialisation of the detector that Kromek have over promised regarding the detector to stay afloat and get the £13m they desperately needed.

With the lack of any details regarding the accreditation process they spoke of for the detector, I’m getting increasingly worried this is the case, and have reduced my holding slightly. On the other hand we’re still in the window of their guidance of commercialisation of it. I’m getting quite nervous with my exposure here. Probably most others are too which explains the constant slide. So many hopes that haven’t been delivered. Yet if they do pull this off they’ll have quite a unique product with a lot of IP and quite a competitive moat. I was reassured when I saw Kromek featured in 4th place in the IP100 league table - so hopefully this is a sign their development of the pathogen detector is progressing well.

Kromeks share price is becoming increasingly dislocated from whatever is happening behind the scenes. The market seems to be trying to figure out what’s happening behind the scenes at Kromek and is flying blind assuming the worst.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.business-live.co.uk/technology/north-east-takes-eight-places-20787788.amp

Schreiber, you forget they’ve outsourced the production of this machine. So global success and pressure shouldn’t be too burdensome for them with this one!

That’s how a long term holder see’s it. As a more recent holder, I personally look at those ‘ruggedised’ radiation detectors and struggle to see how they will ever get regular repeat orders from clients. I can imagine them being a very sales intensive and low reward product. The fairly unique hospital scanners look like the most interesting part of the business. The biological pathogen detector will hopefully be the flour and eggs of the cake

Totally agree Skid, there’s definitely not much trust in the BoD. In fact at around the same time you wrote that was searching for “Kromek patents” as I was starting to even doubt their claim regarding IP they poses around the biological pathogen detector. I found this rather reassuring article about Kromek. Apparently they rank 4th in the U.K. in the IP100 list which include five areas of IP one of which was patents.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.business-live.co.uk/technology/north-east-takes-eight-places-20787788.amp

Kromek will be exhibiting there...

The DSEI exhibition at London Excel could be a great choice of venue for Kromek to launch their biological pathogen detector on the 14th September...

So the theme of the show this year is ‘Integrated Response to Future Threats’ DSEI 2021

From DSEI summary of the event
... The focus on integration has been highlighted by the immense global impact of COVID-19 , and the enforced understanding that robust national resilience relies on more than fire power. With our adversaries increasingly posing non-military threats, greater instinctive integration is required at all levels of the defence community to ensure the UK remains ahead of the challenges that lie ahead.

https://www.dsei.co.uk/

Skid, I’d agree that with a different management team Kromek would be on a much higher valuation. As a long term holder this would be extremely irritating to see value being destroyed as it has been.
However, as a relatively new holder of Kromek I see the past under-achievements of management suppressing the share price coupled with this detector - which should sell itself and be relatively immune from poor management- I see it as a great entry point. I’d admit I wouldn’t want to hold on to Kromek for the long term, but I suspect it will do very well over the next year.

Skid, you’ve researched Kromek pretty well, details of poor corporate governance you’ve highlighted are a great contribution to read through. As annoying as it is to see these various aspects of poor management I’d suggest that it’s fairly common placed in AIM companies. The amounts of money concerned are pretty small in the grand scheme of things. If we look at the governance of this country, by whichever political party, there are plenty of similar examples of incompetence/ scandal. These issues are very irritating but can’t detract from the underlying potential on offer here.

Unsurprising spikes in Kromeks share price result in profit taking, given its share price history.

Investors want to see ‘deeds not words’ when it comes to Kromek and Kromeks share price has been rightly hammered for past underachievements and misguidance from the CEO.

However, what excites me when I look at Kromek are the achievements of its scientists. I’ve got confidence they’re going to pull off this biological pathogen detector and it’s going to detect all known pathogens. It’s going to be unique, it’s going to have a lot of IP and it’s been developed with government money not shareholders money.

It’s going to sell big, personally I think it will be more successful than analyst Hill estimates.

While I think you can probably trade on the spikes and increase your profits doing this. There’s no doubt Kromek is on the way up. Personally I’m not going to do short term trades on it, as I think results day of the trial with expected government orders, will be such a huge one day gain that I don’t want to risk missing out on that. I’m confident that day will come in the coming weeks

An interesting article from McKinsey. When asked how we will end this pandemic Anita Goel, MD, PhD, a world-renowned, award-winning physicist, physician, global-health security expert, and entrepreneur and the chair and CEO of Nanobiosym, pretty much describes the Kromek detector...

McKinsey: What innovations are you most excited about that may help deliver faster, more effective solutions to end the pandemic from both the health and economic perspectives?

Anita Goel: To support recovery from this pandemic, and to prevent future pandemics, we need to have a smarter quarantine system—instead of entire lockdowns on our economy—enabled by decentralized nanoprecision and even quantitative, real-time testing of COVID-19 and other biomarkers. There’s a Harvard University study that says it costs about $12 billion a day for America to have a lockdown.15 And it would cost Americans $20 million a day to test 6 percent of the population—roughly 20 million Americans—to effectively and safely reopen the economy—and keep it open.16

A smart quarantine system means we create COVID-19-free safety zones where we can guarantee individuals, families, and communities—at least within a certain subset of the population—are indeed COVID-19 free. To do that, we need very high-precision, mobilized testing at a molecular level that can give you real-time data. That’s how we are going to be able to separate who’s infected, including the asymptomatic carriers—or "superspreaders"—who carry the virus and can transmit it yet show no symptoms. Today, less than 10 percent of the needed 20 million tests a day in the United States are being done. And the testing that’s being done today provides only qualitative yes-or-no answers and has variable quality.

When the results of the detector trial are out the previous faults such as ventilators, not giving results in a timely manner, will all be of zero interest to new investors realising the potential of a patented unique Biological pathogen detector

Skid35,

Kromek agreed to build these ventilators at a time of national crisis and panic. A time when Astra Zeneca agreed to make vaccines with zero margin. A time when various other UK businesses such as Dyson were persuaded to make ventilators- only to have sold zero ventilators like Kromek.
The lack of an RNS feed could be blamed on The Kromek management, but since it was widely known that only the most severe patients in intensive care were given ventilators- less ill patients in hospital were given oxygen. It was obvious that ventilators were not going to be needed.

I’d say there are much better things to criticise Kromek over than ventilators - the failure to deliver results of the detector trials within the ‘coming days’ would be top of my list. But now we know they results are being accredited by an independent lab it was probably a mistake by an over excited ceo.

With a successful trial and commercialisation starting later this year - I would be surprised to see this staying below £1. The Peel Hunt £25m profit forecast was based on a lower profit margin (25%)than Kromek operates on (52%), it was based on only £100m sales of the detector a (20% of the market for detectors) when there are no other known competitors even close to the Kromek detector. £100m sales of £20,000 detectors is a very small 5000 detectors. Which given the state the world is in with covid seems a ridiculously low estimate of potential global sales.

History repeating itself?

Last Simon Thompson tip after the Friday print edition came out the price ended Monday at 17.75 a further 5% rise. By the end of that week it reached by the following week it reached a further 32% rise.
Today is the Monday after the print edition and we see another 5% rise. Could there be a further 30% rise by the end of the week again?!!

I’d say if the machine works, which looks very likely, and they don’t have any production problems, a £1 share price would be a pretty undemanding valuation, with the potential to go to £3-5. This detector could earn Kromek their full £80m market cap in just one year, with a bit of wind behind them.

If the results to the biological pathogen detector are positive, which they should be, given ST already says in his article that the pilot was successful... then given that there is currently no competition in the market... and given that the global demand for such a machine will be immense. I can’t help but think the £25m annual forecast profit by Hill at Equity Development is extraordinarily pessimistic. Each unit will sell for £20,000 - with a £5,000 profit analyst Hill forecasts. However Kromek make a significantly larger 52per cent gross margins on their other sales. I’d imagine Kromek would have kept the same margin when pricing the detector at £20,000. So the £25m annual profit forecast could be significantly higher. Secondly producing 96 machines a week seems to be a very low estimate given how much demand globally there would be for the machine. Sales would be limited by how many they manage to produce - I wonder how plentiful the supply of components for the machine, such as these nanopores are. Anyhow IF it really does work I could imagine the £25m annual profit forecast possibly tripled. Which, when remembering today’s Kromek market cap is £85m, I’d say this share price rally has significantly further to go. Let’s hope those trial results are good!

£500m was Analyst Paul Hill at Equity Development not Peel Hunt. The independent NHS lab results will form an important part of Kromeks evidence that the detector works.
North Korean Mick, what’s your connection with Kromek? Why do you always get so agitated whenever there’s any critical talk about Kromek by anyone?