Member Info for BlahBlahDoh

"A major part of the business is closed due to covid."
Well, one part of hVivo was closed for a bit, that's excellent compared to the devastation across markets worldwide, and really praising with faint criticism. If that's all you've got, it's very reassuring, minimal impact. Always good to assess the downside, and great news when it is largely insignificant. Please keep posting any downside you can see, as it tends to spotlight the much bigger upside.

Not just down to Covid-19, they have been also been tarnished by association with Finablr (and thereby NMC) who I believe provide(d) money transfer services. Also, news about Airtel India is largely irrelevant as it is a separate company operating in a different territory with different regulators and competitors. Having said that, potential in Africa is huge, and shares were already cheap before the fall. Hoping for recovery on steadily increasing revenue.

It's incredible what CF has achieved in just a few months. The harder he works, the luckier he gets. The new RSV human challenge study work keeps the companies skills in the spotlight as well as generating significant medium term revenue. Feels like there is plenty more to come from this dynamic little company.

Interesting to see Cathal really focusing in on the human challenge model. Didn't fully appreciate the value of this in speeding up the vaccine testing program. If successful this could be headline news around the world as part of getting out of lockdown sooner. With hVivo having more experience than (apparently) anyone anywhere in this field, ORPH could potentially see a huge updraft purely on publicity over this one aspect of their portfolio.

Is there an Echo in here?

You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, wickymicky?
Maybe dot-burglars Samsung will make your (pay)day.

It's quite likely you won't know anyone infected with COVID-19, because despite almost 3 million cases worldwide, that's a tiny percentage of the population. In Spain, one of the worst hit countries, the number infected is less than 0.5%, and it's even lower than than that in the UK (0.3%). Put another way, it's about 3 people in a thousand who have caught it in the UK.

In the US COVID-19 has, as experts predicted, proved much more deadly than flu. CDC preliminary estimates for flu deaths in the US last year are 24,000 – 62,000, giving an average of 43,000, whereas COVID-19 has killed more than 55,000 Americans in less than 4 months.

Multiple opportunities in healthcare, you'd have thought. What happened to the disinfectant paint project, for example? Current management seem to have gone into a bunker, inept underachievers who deserve to be replaced.

The margin increase is a solid achievement from management who have risen to the challenges. Having overcome some pretty big growing pains, G4M look stronger and hopefully poised to resume their interrupted trajectory with enhanced distribution and logistics capability.

"it will be paid I’m sure"
next day " they must have to suspend the divi at the very least and retain cash"

Your sureness seemed to last only 24 hrs, MrFlibbertigibbet :)
So far Pru and M&G both still on track to pay, definitely maybe.

Bear in mind flu-V is not the only universal flu vaccine on the market, and none of them hold any guarantees they will work. And of course, any big pharma looking at getting into the financially risky business of funding vaccine development would probably think about COVID-19 first. Governments ought to be buyers and promoters of virus vaccines though: flu kills an estimated 290,000-650,000 worldwide every year, according to the WHO, compared to 178,669 (worldometer) from COVID-19 so far.

Maybe ORPH's business model is becoming tangled? They started off targeting Orphan drugs as a fast growing segment of the industry, and trying to avoid risk wherever possible by providing only services which generate revenue, such as testing and consultancy, exploiting their regulatory experience, easing market access and so forth. There was a solid logic to this: they could speed up the development of a plethora of low-volume medicines both at beginning, by making relevant data accessible via bespoke platforms, and at the end, when products needed to navigate the tricky European regulatory environment, while avoiding the risky all-or-nothing business of actually developing the drugs.

Acquiring hVivo so cheaply was irresistible, but Friel hasn't properly rewritten the story of ORPH yet. Sure, the skills are being employed now on flu-v, but that's not an orphan drug. We have several different strands to operations now, some of which integrate logically, but others less clearly, with the orphan drugs for which the company is named seemingly neglected. Time to crank up the BS generator? Maybe Friel is working on rationalisation.

Whatabout Hillary?

Sorry, couldn't resist it. Back on ORPH: the sources of funding seem obscure, with big pharma seemingly not even interested in COVID-19 vaccines, let alone universal flu. We may need the politicians to move this forward?

The huge US death toll and massive costs resulting from Trump ignoring WHO advice through January and February might result in late catch-up spending on vaccine testing and related services, maybe even a rebooting of Obama's pandemic response team. On the other hand, if you are gullible enough to believe anything Trump says, then you'd presumably think any spending would be confined to American companies rather than ORPH.

Even Bill Gates was predicting another flu pandemic rather than a coronavirus one, which was reasonable, based on history. Flu pandemic is no less likely, nor are future coronaviruses (COVID-19 was the seventh to jump to humans). The abrupt worldwide recognition of these alarming threats makes ORPH a general virology play rather than just a specifically COVID-19 one, a long term boom for the newly integrating services and testing business rather than a flash in the pan.

"We have a vaccine against SARS"
Nobody has produced a vaccine against SARS, despite years of effort, so I don't understand your comment. People are still trying to develop one. That is why we shouldn't be too confident about developing on for COVID-19 (SARS-2) even on a 18 month timescale.

"Why has cathal not told you this?"

Nasty question! Because he is so shy, reticent, and tongue-tied?

Imagination are up in front of MPs today over security concerns. Looks like the Chinese government were deliberately attempting to get around UK restrictions by moving jurisdiction of the controlling company from the US to the Cayman Islands. Sneaky AF. Maybe Nanoco's technology would be considered important enough to protect by the new government after all? https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52275201

I would have thought 29th May, as the date they must either pay, delay, or cancel, is the key date. Are there any legal reasons why they cannot cancel after the ex-div date? Even if there are, I suspect they could successfully argue extenuating circumstances. The longer they can leave it, the better informed the decision will be, imo.

"While traditional flu vaccines work via antibodies, FLU-v works through stimulating cellular immunity.

“Cellular immune responses include activity by white blood cells called cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). Recent research has shown that influenza-specific CTLs can seek out and remove virus-infected cells before and after flu symptoms arise,” according to the NIAID press release.

FLU-v catalyzes production of these CTLs by targeting proteins inside the virus that do not vary substantially from strain to strain." "

https://www.contagionlive.com/news/universal-flu-vaccine-candidate-shows-protection-in-new-trial

Put simply, Flu-v encourages the immune system to attack the proteins inside the virus rather than those on the surface (I think!), thereby affecting all types of flu, all mutations.