Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
I'm happy to be corrected wombat? Let me/us know what you mean, without being unpleasant.
I can see how PSE being bought by individual doctors who note that it does seem to work, will help to spur the private sales market. I can't see how it will help with any official approval.
The problem with real world data for CIRT and PSE, is that how do you prove a negative? A doctor could use a CIRT test which states that a cancer patient won't react well to ICI drugs, so they don't give them the drugs and they die 12 months later, how do you know at an individual level whether the CIRT result was accurate? Same with PSE, the doctor might use it and it says the patient has a 94% of having prostate cancer, OK you can send them for biopsy and it will probably show that they have it, the doctor thinks "fine the test was accurate", maybe they do a few more and see that those were accurate too, but how does his experience make any difference to PSE getting approval from the relevant authorities?
@Dugwalker thanks for your updates.
I have always thought/said that in the short term OBD needs to aim for breakeven. If that can be achieved then the fear of further discounted placings will vanish, along with the shorters and weak/stale holders.
Completely ignoring PSE, to reach breakeven we only need to sell approx 500-600 CIRT tests per month. We were at 120 in June and it was growing exponentially. Surely we must be at double that level (at least) today, especially as BUPA orders start to kick in? It seems perfectly reasonable to me that we will be at the magic 500-600 per month by Q1 2024. All it needs is for the tiny 50 physicians buying CIRT in June to double to 100 (still a very small proportion of 20,000 US oncologists) and each to double their small early buying volumes, and we're virtually there....
I'm not saying there will never be another placing if we reach breakeven, of course there probably will, but they would be done for investment in growth only, and would also be done from a position of strength and not weakness to avoid running out of cash.
Oxford is very different to other small AIM pharmas which are at early stages and many years/£millions away from commercialisation. We are actually making money, at high margins, growing rapidly from a small base, in massive markets.
That's why I invested here anyway.
Good luck all
I'm still struggling to understand the conflict between two positions:
1. That we have only had a small trial (approx 150 was it?) of PSE and so we need to do a trial of thousands before any medical body will confirm that PSE works and can be bought en masse for clinical use,
and
2. Oxford's very clear statement (and what made me buy here) that the 150 were enough to validate the test and commercialise it, because the type of trial using genetic markers did not need a massive trial... plus the FDA giving PSE a sales code which they wouldn't do if they thought it was inaccurate...
Can anyone with greater medical knowledge than me please enlighten us about this conflict?
Thanks
Thanks for the useful update Dug...
So really we need to (a) check that Transform is still open to entries, and (b) push OBD hard to make sure they're included! I mean I'm sure they will be doing their best, it seems inconceivable that they wouldn't, but some friendly pressure from shareholders won't go amiss....
I still
My view is that the company must be approaching breakeven just from CIRT in the near future. At that point does a £60M valuation for a company with an excellent new prostate test starting commercial ramp up, and an excellent IP platform with a pipeline of new drugs being developed, make sense?
Agreed Dug. Within weeks we could see BUPA take up the PSE test. Or Oxford could confirm that NICE has added PSE into their prostate cancer testing and treatment review. Or a general sales update.
Of course it's possible that we may also see a placing, who knows. The company doesn't need working capital until mid-2024 they said, but I suppose that they might want to invest in a big sales push for PSE? If so I have no objection to kick-starting a massive sales stream :-). If they need to raise another £5M for arguments sake, it's less than a 10% dilution at these levels, unlike at 10p... If you can't stomach the occasional modest dilution on the way to wealth, then you shouldn't be investing.
The key thing for me is I think we have top management, both medical and business, including the new sales director. Top management and massive products - I'm happy to trust them to get on with it!
GLA DYOR etc
Noix, I fear you're getting mixed up between the MHRA (UK) and the FDA (the USA equivalent body)?!
This article seems to refer only to the time taken to green light trials. Yes it could save a few weeks but it won't affect the length of the trials themselves?
Sitiain,
Off topic but what's your view for OBD? Your post suggests that you think it's overvalued? Surely at the same market cap as DEST today, but with its first two products actually starting sales rampup into large markets, and a similar platform to DEST with more tests being developed, I see them both as equally undervalued?
Thanks for any comments.
They said quite clearly 2 days before the end of Q3 that they "expected" an 80% QonQ rise in prescriptions. So that gives a number. Now whether it ended up being 78% or 82% who knows but it's not really material IMVHO
They put out Q3 figures a couple of days before Q3 ended... Plus it's common to do a 'pre close' trading update around Xmas .. but I don't have a crystal ball... Even if it's mid-Jan we're only arguing over a couple of weeks...
Can anyone confirm that the "2.6x" reported in the RNS of 10th May refers to actually mining 2.6x as many bitcoins, for a 4% reduction in energy use? Because I've seen elsewhere references to "2.6x the probability of finding the hash" or something like that - frankly I don't quite understand the difference, I'm not enough of a maths whiz! Thanks for any clarification.
They already gave a fairly solid guidance for Q3 numbers in the H1 result at the end of September! I'm not expecting a formal Q3 update now, ultimately it might be slightly more or less than they stated but it won't make any difference. Q4/FY trading update at the end of December I would think. Would be good if they got to say 110k prescriptions for the year, but more important is to see an upturn in the GTN.
Yes that's how options work, simple really. You'll notice that some options were also relinquished today, the exercise price of those will have been at higher prices, so today they're effectively worthless and have been replaced by new ones at 34p. It would have been ideal if the options were layered at higher prices eg. 1/3 at 34p, 1/3 at 60p, 1/3 at 90p bit there you go. It certainly shows that the receivers expect the SP to be significantly higher than 34p in due course - but it doesn't guarantee it by any means, no one can see the future...