Gordon Stein, CFO of CleanTech Lithium, explains why CTL acquired the 23 Laguna Verde licenses. Watch the video here.
Interesting context. I hadn’t thought of it that way. I suppose one more thing you could say is that each of these majors features parent companies founded well over a hundred years ago, when regulation in the industry was simpler, or non-existent. They’ve had the chance to evolve with and adapt to the developing regulations from a larger, more cash-rich starting point.
Must be much harder for any business starting out afresh now. Although… as you say, there are third party consultancies that can help with specialist requirements, and top talent is mobile and can bring in knowledge from the majors.
We’ll see what happens. How to get it to market and maximise shareholder returns will be a nice problem to have if they can first confirm it works as well as we hope.
I appreciate you probably have more experience of that world than me, but still… Every big drug company has got to start somewhere, right? And if they had a pure strategy of getting taken over, what would happen if they didn’t? My point is they might be trying to make the business attractive for a takeover, but they can’t rely on that happening. They’ve got a lot of heavyweight advisors onboard recently - maybe their input could have caused this change in strategic direction.
It’s a good point, MrA.
I think originally, AVA6000 was seen as perhaps just a stepping stone on the path to TMAC. Now, if they are stating they want to keep it all in house, the data must be great. Perhaps the data are so good that they anticipate takeover bids, and retaining 100% control of the most derisked candidate in the platform drug makes them more attractive to suitors.
On the flip side, until such time as any bid may occur, they have to follow what they see as the best long term strategy for the business. Which ultimately means bringing drugs to market. If they have partners licensing out other products on the preCISION platform, why not go it alone on AVA6000? They have shown more ability to deliver in therapeutics than diagnostics so far; they have phenomenal advisors in place, and you might assume (hope) they will learn from past mistakes. There will be growing pains of course, but just because something is hard, is that a reason not to attempt it?
If they are going to take a drug all the way to market, why not AVA6000? It’s just a new delivery mechanism for a well-understood drug after all, which may smooth the pathway somewhat, e.g. if no Phase 3 is needed.
Strange. It omitted “maybe make something up to fit your preferred narrative”? Doesn’t like pointy brackets apparently.
Those sneaky MMs do whatever they can to stimulate a rough balance of buys and sells while making money at the expense of frequent traders.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re holding the price down to help Black Rock load up close to the 100-110p support zone.
Or maybe there is a large seller that will be announced later. Or maybe sells going through as buys and vice versa, obscuring the true picture. Or maybe ? AIM is frequently baffling and probably corrupt most of the time. What can we do but wait for the big picture to play out?
Wouldn’t be surprised if much of the guaranteed revenue from that IGS contract is back-end weighted, but we’ll see! Just trying to keep my expectations in check, while my hopes remain high.
$250-300k would represent the same sort of % growth as in the last quarter, but who knows what the growth rate of LiveScores is doing, and meanwhile there are new sources of revenue like this IGS contract, that could surprise to the upside.
Looking back through past RNS’s:
- 1st December 2021 trading update - >$80k/month revenue
- 1st March 2022 - not labelled a trading update, but we heard them that monthly revenue was now >$150k. Also stated intent to move to trading updates every quarter.
Seems very likely we’ll get the latest trading update in a couple weeks, and a chance to see where we lie vs the exponential revenue growth trajectory that started last year. Would be nice to see >$250k, but I’ll settle for $200k/month. ;)
Not an expert, but to me it just looks like a reference database of synthetic binding proteins identified in scientific literature and other online sources. Search by scaffold = Affimer and you get this list, probably all with references to papers or documents affiliated with Avacta:
http://synbip.idrblab.net/search/result/sbp-by-list?name=Affimer
Black cat - I’m sure you know already, but June 2023 is the estimated completion of Phase 1b. At that point the drug will have been trialled in 10s of patients and we’ll have a very early view on efficacy.
Phase 1a (dose escalation and initial PK data) due in Q3 this year.
While Phase 1b (dose expansion) is primarily about determining the safety and tolerability at the recommended Phase 2 dose, there are some efficacy-related “Secondary outcome measures” from the trial plan:
- Objective response rate (ORR) [ Time Frame: Up to one year ]
ORR is defined as the proportion of patients achieving a best overall response of confirmed partial responses (PR) or complete response (CR), per Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST 1.1).
- Duration of Response (DoR) [ Time Frame: Up to one year ]
DoR is defined as the duration of time from date of first response to date of disease progression, as per RECIST v1.1
- Progression-free-survival (PFS) [ Time Frame: Up to one year ]
PFS is defined as the time from the date of the first dose to the date of the first documentation of confirmed disease progression or death, whichever occurs first, as per RECIST v1.1
- Overall survival (OS) [ Time Frame: Up to one year ]
Overall survival (OS), defined as the date of first dose) to the occurrence of death from any cause
I’d just be careful comparing that 80-4000 factor with the 18:1 tumour:heart ratio - it’s apples to oranges. That is from in-vitro studies, and means the ‘inert’ un-activated form of AVA6000 is that much less cytotoxic to cells in controlled culture conditions. Once doxorubicin is released it is just as cytotoxic. So the 80 to 4000 factor is unlikely to bear any relation to the ratio of Dox in the tumour vs healthy tissues, or relative impact of the side effects, unless by coincidence.
You just want it released (and then as much as possible staying in and attacking cells in) the right place. We’ll find out soon enough!
Let’s not forget a 1% total declared short position is only about 2.5m shares. Since 30th March the daily volume has been over 2m/day (sometimes up to 8m) on all but 3 days.
They could have snuck in lots of buys over that time, but given they were each just over the notifiable threshold of 0.5%, it would be naughty if they had sold any and dropped below the threshold without notifying the next working day, so if they were following the rules, since they dropped off the list of shorts at the end of this week, it would suggest they started to reduce their shorts Thursday, maybe Wednesday at the earliest. We had under 2 million trades on each of Weds/thurs, another 2.5-3m Friday… no major bump in volume over the background.
So if they were obeying the rules, and if they fully closed out it would mean half of the trades in the last two days were shorts buying. That would mean a massive drop in the background trade volume though, so my guess is they still have a sizeable chunk of the positions to close out. All guesswork though.
Not sure if we can be certain that they have closed, just that they have dropped below the notifiable 0.5%. Odd that the system doesn’t say when they did that.
Thanks Lovebug1 - the Q and A always arrives just when you’d forgotten to expect it!
Lots of new text around existing answers. Love the confidence.
“Q4: A licencing deal for AVA6k or the PreCision platform as a whole has been mentioned previously. Are you able to provide a feel for what level of interest there has been? I appreciate that these discussions will be commercially sensitive but it's fairly clear that many shareholders are concerned about the company's cash runway and would like to avoid / minimise dilution. A feel for the level of interest would ease many shareholder's concerns.
There is a strong level of interest in the preCISION platform and this will be driven further by the Phase 1a data in the middle of 2022 since this is a first in human study for the platform. Activities such as the poster presentation at AACR are also generating strong interest, but it is the clinical data that will be key to future significant licensing deals.”
WILL be driven. Not “will potentially”. Strong words.
Ah, I love the taste of crayons melting in the morning.
The price per share shouldn’t matter to anyone with a large pot to invest, who tend to be the ones that move the price. You allocate as much money as you want to, and get the same fraction of the company depending on number of your shares vs total shares in issue.
Look at market cap instead. The share price is purely cosmetic. It should only make a difference to an investor/trader who wants to buy into a company and can’t afford a single share, or can’t buy fractional shares to the approximate allocation they’re looking for, e.g. if I want to invest $5k but the shares are $3.5k each. Most US brokers now sell fractional shares in US stocks, so it’s not really relevant for the likes of Google and Amazon anymore, and to my knowledge there aren’t many UK companies with such high SPs to worry about.
Anyway, Audioboom… They’ve have been my best ever investment so far. I was lucky to get in just under £2 (with an unfortunately low allocation, unfortunately outside my ISA), and of course it’s nice to see how much bigger that number is now. A lot of success (or a T/O) priced in now perhaps, but so far they just keep on delivering. Just popped in to sample the mood before thinking about a slice for some ISA money. Knowing my skill at trading it’ll lurch upwards the minute I do it.
GLA, have a great day.
Yes… I think there’s a balance between announcing progress in detail to show the market what’s going on, and not giving away info to competitors on where the most money is to be made. As a holder, I’m happy for them to err on the side of the business’ long term interest rather than the share price’s short term gain.
So we’ve moved to quarterly updates… The latest business period update was 18th March for the 6 months to end-December 2021.
Since then we know the revenue run—rate continues to increase every month ($150k/month reported on 1st March). Should be a nice Q1 2022 update when that lands (shortly after end April?).
Oh and expecting more news on GFIN, Jio, NFTs, etc, any time. But it seems the market wants concrete numbers as until things hit the bottom-line most people are pretty skeptical of AIM CEOs talking up potential. Perhaps as “yesterday’s” potential continues to become today’s impressive results, the market might give ME and team more credit for “tomorrow’s” potential.
MWH - if you read the board like the output of a single mind yes it would seem that way. There is, granted, too much hyperbole. But the individual characters on here are mostly pretty consistent. Some always negative, some rampy without substance, some rampy with substance, some balanced, and a few who swing both ways like the wind and are obvious traders.
Most of the negative trolls are taking a breather now though while the share price goes up. It was generally they who were calling for the head of the CEO previously, and even a few genuine folk jumped onboard that train of thought, you could perhaps say justifiably irate at the LFT debacle.
Most of the sound minds have always been willing to cut AS some slack though. The covid LFT opportunity was just one Diagnostic shot on goal. Sure, we missed (for the time being), but now we’ve got a new Therapeutic striker on the ball. Our wunderkind poached from the Americas is in the penalty box, with a 1-on-1 situation against a backup keeper. And there’s a few of his mates on the bench looking pumped and ready to go.
Is this a personal experience, QR, or just something you’re sharing for info?
Comes off patent next year anyway… Are there any rules against taking a drug through development while it’s still under patent?
I did wonder when AS said the drug was a similar form of velcade… Who would have a better understanding of effective velcade-like drugs than Takeda? I think in earlier presentations it was just stated as a precision form of velcade, so could there have been some co-development already?