Member Info for BlahBlahDoh

Thanks for dropping me a line Holly, but what a strange angle. I got in the onion reference that Dodger picked up on, and a Viz one too: a satisfying net result.

Second one surely, Pollocky?

Wrong SAGE Mr Magoo, Major Misunderstanding? Don't shoot the golden goose and stuff it with onions old boy.

Value of data may be proven elsewhere, but LTH have been waiting over a year to see ORPH monetise their original databases in any way whatsoever, with revenue coming instead from integrating and streamlining acquired businesses. I wonder if there is a case for taking on more specialised management to speed up the marketing of data assets, as CFs original timescales for this were much,much faster than what has actually been achieved.

"With the shares at 722p... forward-looking dividend yield for the trading year to September 2021 is just below 2.5%"

With the shares at their current price though, the forward yield is more like a solid 2.9%, making it that bit more attractive given the quality of the underlying business and the chances of a markedly improved outlook just one year away. The margin drop is done for a reason, after all, not enforced.

Div increase was 2% YOY, which seems OK when some companies have cancelled. It's quite a reasonable yield at the current SP!

Steve Hare claimed the "planned" margin drop next year was "to increase its investment in sales and marketing and product development." Not sure how dropping the margin helps products develop, but they have a large cash pile and maybe going after market share?

" Organic operating margin is expected to be up to three percentage points below financial 2020"
"Beyond the 2021 financial year, though, Sage expects margins to trend upwards "over time"."

So the market seems to have focused just on next years margins? Even then though, revenue is set to increase, which seems like the more important factor.

Who said I don't like what CF is doing? I've said exactly the opposite for months. Address the issues I've commented on, don't give stupid pointless advice and try to put words into my mouth. I've given detailed reasons for my opinion and you don't seem to be capable of rebutting it. If you find critical analysis too difficult to handle, best not come to a discussion board. Bud.

More unconvincing stuff on wearables, imo. CF thinks he first mentioned this 6 weeks ago? Come off it, we all know it's longer than that. It's now "up to 10" wearables companies interested, an almost meaningless comment when you think about it. His claim that the devices instruments could distinguish between different diseases sounded like fiction, and still no hint of why they would need disease progression data for this (presumably to derive algorithms, but why not say so). Timescales have also become vaguer. All in all, a weaker outlook on this line of business compared to his previous position.

I didn't like his answer to the question about genomic databases either, basically just saying it was part of the infectious disease data. I interpreted the question as referring not to infectious diseases, but to the platforms built for orphan diseases prior to acquiring hVivo. If the longstanding promises about the inherent value of those genomic databases is now being watered down to something less coherent, that's disappointing.

It's clear from the way CF took an axe to the management structure and rewards that he won't play by the BS rules of the city gents. He doesn't even offer healthcare, ffs! Being paid for work is a given, he didn't disclose the amount, so can't see any real problem with that, and the style has been consistent from the start.

These are all the dividends relating to last financial year:
Sept 2019 Prudential INTERIM dividend of 16.45p
May 2020 M&G dividend of 11.92p, special 3.85p

M&g were spun off from Prudential in Oct 2019. The interim Pru dividend in Sept 2019 is therefore counted as zero in quoted yields for M&G, and even the March 2020 M&G dividend doesn't qualify as a "final" dividend for technical reasons. Quoted yields for last year are therefore problematical, and will not normalise until the first official "final" dividend in May 2021.

Your component figures are spot on Freedom, but the "total" is wrong because the components are from different financial years. The 6p you mentioned is the interim for current year, the 11.92p is effectively the "final" from last year. The quoted yields are wrong on a lot of platforms because they don't (maybe can't?) include anything for an interim last financial year, which was paid when they were still part of Prudential. In reality, a proportion of that Pru dividend was attributable to M&G, a little less than 6p perhaps, so your 18p total is not far off, the true yield was probably around 17.8p, but the one-off 3.85p bonus dividend took the actual payout over 21p.

No bonus this year, but hopefully a final divi of slightly above 12p will make this years total payout just over 18p, much higher than a 6.2% yield based on current price. As a result of the above, many investors probably don't realise how good the dividends are here - they really have been remarkable, yet ignored by most financial journalists. It will be interesting to see if the SP rises when the anomaly in the reported yield disappears after the next dividend.

Superb journalism by Roger Highfield, thanks for sharing Trader_3. It is interesting that there are antibodies specific to the nose, and that they will use nasal drops to infect volunteers because this seems to result in less harmful symptoms. Really insightful comment on the specific benefits of challenge studies and why the UK is (and always has been) the worldwide centre for them. The contrast with US attitudes over ethics is striking, but if we'd followed their logic we might still be suffering a 10% death rate from small pox.

This recent IPO seems to have inherited a ticker from a delisted business. I think the issue price was 1 dollar, so presumably they are quoted in dollars? Looks like an interesting alternative investment: Fund managers M&G have taken a 15% stake.

Another thought about timescales for vaccines in the US - so far, they have only managed about 170M tests for COVID-19. That's less than half the population with just simple tests. Imagine how long a roll-out of any vaccine is going to take.

You're akin to Hugh Laurie with the doctor thing, Leicesterboy - in an interview with Seth Meyers he described himself as the ham in a medical sandwich. The article gives a good insight into the debate in the US, and by contrast the details of action imminent in the UK. My thought is that if you don't do Human Challenges during a pandemic, when do you do them? The argument that it should not go ahead until we have a cure now seems to be reversed into it is no longer necessary... because we have a cure. The real ethical question should probably be, how many people do we risk injecting with vaccines we do not fully understand which have only been tested on a few thousand - do we just jab the whole world and see what happens? I suggest some highly controlled hard-core science is the better risk.

Thanks Bronx, he's confident!
"Human challenge trials will not stop when the first generation of Covid vaccines are released. Note this point, specifically. First generation. There will be multiple generations of vaccines tested, trialled and released to treat SARS-COV-2 between now and 2025. "

He distinguishes between opportunities in wearables data and infectious disease progression data (i.e. hVivo library), but forgets about the orphan disease data. Hoping for some real progress in one of these areas soon.

The Human Challenge studies are to be on about 200 people, I think: more than were infected by the Pfizer and Moderna trials combined, and much more closely monitored. By the time they are completed, in May 2021, the most at risk groups will probably already be vaccinated, so the knowledge gained will be applicable to a second generation of vaccines.

First thought: why are the Bank Of England printing quantum dots, is it a new cryptocurrency? Apparently it's a Chinese display company though, and they seem to have broken through a technical barrier to be able to produce next-generation-technology screens of marketable size, at least in small quantities. If we can 'take back control' of our IP, maybe there is an opportunity down the line for supplying dots at industrial scale for such printing applications?

Interesting comment from Trudie Lang (University of Oxford) "This is also an interim analysis, which means that there were enough cases within the vaccinated volunteers to give statistical significance and allow the team to break the blind to determine who had the active vaccine and who had placebo."

That means there have not yet been enough people contracting the virus in the Oxford phase 3 trials to warrant 'breaking the blind'.

The number of cases in the Pfizer and Moderna trials give an idea of the level of risk of contraction: roughly 94 in 43,000 over three summer months, with trials typically conducted in high infection areas.