RE: Glum16 Aug 2021 11:24
Its AIM, Jupiter has a short still on Avacta plus does anyone remember this?? It was a note from broker to clients, I believe.
We are the 'Spivvy retail' money. You're being bumped out of your positions
LONDON SOUTH EAST
a window I still had open (wonder why it vanished?) .. AVACTA/ KEY new UK name..£396m market cap.
Stifel covereage now and and...
the bottom line here is fantastic and exciting science and If this wasn't in the UK on AIM, and was listed in US it would have a multi-billion valuation.
Avactas platform technology is based on affimers, which are antibody mimetics, based on human proteins (vs antibodies which are made using sheep, pigs etc). Affimers much easier to make than monoclonal antibodies, and much more durable, and much more easily administered. Most new drug treatments (and much of cancer) based on antibodies - huge and growing TAM. Avacta has lots of fully funded R&D partnerships with leafing pharma/biotech Moderna, LG Chem, Daewoong, ADC (Astra Zeneca) where it has licensed its Affimer platform and will earn royalties (and contributing zero to R&D). Also has in house therapeutic platform for cancer - insanely exciting, using Affimers for immunotherapy (monoclonal antibodies been a massive growth market for cancer treatment) and also has an exclusive license agreement with Tufts University for pro-chemo drugs which use a special enzyme to destroy tumours but not impact healthy tissue - this alone
could create a multi-billion TAM e.g. Doxorubicin is most Successful chemotherapy drug for breast cancer but only $1bn annual global sales because max 6 doses because it is so toxic and kills heart tissue, but the pro-drug that AVCT has increases dosage to >18x and puts cancer in remission. Other great thing about Affimers is that AVCT can work around all the IP rights around antibodies, with complete freedom, so enormous strategic value. Big catalyst will be in H1 next year when do P1 trial and demonstrate safety. And then there is the diagnostic platform with Affimers being used instead of antibodies. These are Far superior to antibodies, can be mass produced, much more sensitive their Covid diagnostic lab test is 1000x more sensitive that AbCam's. Avacta is developing one of these saliva LFT tests that UK Government keeps on talking about. Partnered with Cytiva (Danaher). Upside could be huge but a lot of arguably low quality spivvy retail money (thanks to AIM status and having Fincap as house broker but some good news on this with another house joining! I wonder who?!) is flinging the share price around, just playing the Covid LFT catalyst. But balance sheet has >£50m cash, so are well funded in near term. Big problem is only a few good II names on the register to date - Baillie G, Premier Miton, Conifer (Sequoia) and Lombard Odier.