Member Info for DugWalker

Dibs & Tav,

The senior management team constitutes 2 identifiable groups. A UK group affiliated to UK Universities hold non-customer facing roles. They include the CSO, CDO and CFO. Then there is a US group that mostly have links with Burrows via Oncoplex, Oncology Partners or PolarityTE (Burrows appears to be President of their contract services business, but doesn't mention that in his linkedin profile)

https://wallmine.com/nasdaq/pte/officer/2210285/dr-jon-anthony-joseph-burrows-b-sc-m-sc-ph-d

The US group includes our COO (oncoplex), Lab Medical Director (oncoplex), Arrivo (oncology partners), Mathis (polarityTE) Abdo (polarityTE) , Blum (polarityTE).

Now all those guys from the US have shared experience shaped by working in that market where it has been commonplace to commercialise lab developed tests in what is essentially a non-regulated environment. Not all LDT's require medics to make life changing decisions based on the results. OBD's tests do. Could they be facing more pushback from oncologists than they have previously encountered? Seems far fetched but it could begin to explain their collective disinterest in Transform if they thought ithe US market was going to be a stroll in the park having been led to that conclusion by a collective experience that has limited relevance to what they now find themselves attempting to commercialise?

Speculation born of my suspicion that we are not being told why they couldn't sell a lifebelt to a drowning man.

Hi Tav,

I found Burrows reading from a crib sheet, in an attempt to convince us he was knowledgeable about the Transform project, borderline comical.

He did say that we have employed a 3rd party advocate to try to secure our participation. It does make you wonder what all those V.P's , CD and CSO's do on a day to day basis. In my email to investor relations I asked directly who in the company is charged with securing the participation Burrows says is a must have. For what it's worth I'm with yo, I doubt any of them have that as a KPI.

Hi Dibs,

Just to clarify, only about half of them are on the board. According to the corporate website the BOD is the C*O's plus the Laboratory Medical Director.

The V.P. roles must have subtle distinctions in responsibilities resulting in blurred demarcation lines!

All in all it seems a disproportionately large number of Senior Managers for the commercial 'success' delivered to date.

Hi Phinx,

I don't have concerns about the science. My perception is that there may be problems of managerial competence.

We have

a CEO,;

a CSO;

a CFO;

a COO;

a CDO;

We also have;

a Lab Medical Director,

a VP of Clinical Diagnostics;

a Senior VP of Business and Corporate Development;

a VP of Market Access and Business Development;

a Senior VP/ Head of Marketing;

a Senior VP (Commercial);

a Company Secretary.

That's 12 senior managers for a company of around 50 employees selling ~4 diagnostic tests a day!

They must be tripping over one another as they struggle to clarify and distinguish individual responsibilities. At least 4 of the recent appointments have prior work associations to Burrows.

I'd like to see their personal KPI's to see if they might throw light on the value we can expect from each of them in return for paying all those salaries.

Hi Kong,

Last week I took a look at Ryan Mathis's (new VP for CiRT) linkedin page. I commented in here that at that point in time there was no reference to OBD on his profile, two months after we apparently recruited him.

I was curious about that because there was mo RNS announcing this price sensitive appointment.

One day later his linkedin profile had finally changed to mention OBD. I wonder if the grown ups are visiting this forum? I hope our Chairman is as he needs to light a fire under our BOD.

.

Scientists and statisticians are not the audience we need to be addressing wombat. There will be very few decision makers at those conferences and sadly even the workshops targeting oncologists directly have failed to produce the goods so far.

Management need to focus on why they are failing to gain traction in the market place. That needs to be the #1 priority far above anything else right now.

In my personal experience conferences are fine for networking with peers and on a very odd occasion they might generate a lead to a business opportunity. We will only capitalise on opportunities once we have identified and addressed the reasons for market resistance.

It seems our salary bill increased by circa 20% last year adding £0.9 million to operating costs or just short of 10% of current losses.

https://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/news/AN_1705488195409684500/correct-oxford-biodynamics-plunge-as-annual-profit-rises;-revenue-up.aspx

I doubt very much that the laboratory manager and laboratory technician roles that were advertised through the year have contributed much to this. The labs however, appear to be severely underutilised luxuries based on current sales data.

We have recruited 3 new V.P.'s, and whilst, to my knowledge, at least a couple of them are very recent recruits. it seems likely that their salaries and overheads associated with their roles have made a significant contribution to the increased staffing costs.

It is notable that all 3 have prior association with our CEO, through prior employment. This begs some questions as to the recruitment process employed. Were the roles, responsibilities and performance indicators defined in advance to facilitate an open and competitive recruitment process or was it a case of someone sifting through a contacts list on their mobile?

Regardless of how they came to be employed, it seems reasonable to assume that these VP roles have added hundreds of thousands to our annual operating costs at a time when money is in short supply. Presumably there was a clear business plan used to justify this very significant growth of senior managers? I guess we might have anticipated that their costs would be justified by an immediate impact on sales figures, say a doubling of sales from 3 or 4 tests day to perhaps 6 or 7 tests (1 per V.P.) . Not a big ask if they could each leverage their networks to get folks buying. Since it appears they are struggling to accomplish such a modest achievement it again begs the question why the oncology communities in the US are seemingly averse to purchasing our tests? What are we not being told?

We heard last week that two of our V.P.'s have been tasked with producing cost benefit analyses to support sales. Could this not have been done cheaper by temporary employment of a consultant?

We also hear they are to be tasked with getting our tests incorporated into guidance notes for medics in the US. If this is possible given the current pitiful sales volumes and validation status why hasn't it been done previously to support the commercial launch?

Some interesting questions to be asked at our coming AGM. Will we be allowed to ask them?

@Sebo.

IP without sales is a huge drain on cash. Do not expect fair value from an acquisition whilst sales languish at current levels.

The reality is that we may give away IP rights for colorectal and cannine cancers on the cheap to bring in funds to continue paying salaries to Burrows growing 'old mates club' and to finance attendance at transatlantic conferences and workshops that bring no return in terms of increased sales.

I see a few folks starting to leave comments on the company's LinkedIn pages. I wonder if those remarks might see them start using funds to properly validate our tests (randomised clinical trials at scale please!), rather than to finance jollies to Califonian conferences that self-evidently are having zero impact on sales figures, but that contribute significantly to cash burn rate.

I fear that talk of poor marketing, inappropriate pricing etc may be missing the point. These only become an issue if and when doctors are willing to use the tests and I suspect many will not be unless and until the test(s) are formally endorsed by inclusion in guidance notes (or similar) from regulatory authorities such as NICE. Our CEO seems at last to be acknowledging this by directing Dr's Arrivo and Mathis to focus on getting our tests included in guidance notes for doctors in the US

The emphasis thus far put on the US market by Burrows may, in large part, be because of the relative lack of regulations for LDT's in the US and that is why questions were asked of him in relation to the FDA's determination to change that situation.

It's a dry read, but here is a link to UK guidance on the validation of diagnostic tests;

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a8210cfed915d74e6235995/Q_1i5.pdf

It defines metrics like PPV, NPV, specificity etc. It also suggests how sample size should be judged ('advice from a statistician'), but the striking thing is it appears to be largely a self-regulated process leading to a preliminary quantification of these performance metrics. I think this is the process being referred to when OBD talk of the tests being 'validated'. The requirements seem to me to be less stringent than 'verification' which requires input and oversight of external specialists. Both are important stepping stones during the development of a new diagnostic test but are nowhere near as demanding as confirming practical performance at scale via a randomised control trial. I think this is why Prostate Cancer UK have identified this as an outstanding requirement if our PSE test is to be a potential basis for a national screening programme. Until this is done many medics may remain sceptical about putting them into practice. It is why I was genuinely shocked by Burrows apparently superficial knowledge of the Transform trial. He's right in that we need to be part of it. So much so it should be a resignation matter for him if we are not.

Hi Sitiain,

If you can find the discussions that we had in here around the time of the public announcement of the Transform project you will see that Prostate Cancer UK actually welcome the development of the PSE test. They take it seriously but they don't take claims that it is adequately validated seriously.

I suspect the same holds for CiRT amongst the immunotherapy community.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02E8bSMoLhELWoeoBzqJCpRSpNcRVSPbrdqeAZEGkWYb9Gn21vd3QbJUq2uScUyPz9l&id=100078170934685

What is meant by 'candid input' in the above link to OBD's report of one of their workshops in the US? That doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement of CiRT.

Good post Tav. Too many fail to realise that even after his recent sells Diggle has been a net buyer over the last 18 months and no doubt shored up the last couple of placings. His investment company (Vulpes) most probably have risk management regulations that force him to sell some shares if they come to represent too big a proportion of their portfolio.

At least they know how we feel about him.

If we needed any evidence that they read this board it can be found in Ryan Mathis's linkedin account which has finally been modified (today) to reflect his employment by the company.

Still somewhat bemused that Steve Arrivo arrived to a fanfare whilst the first we heard of Ryan Mathis came in this week's webinar, weeks or months after his appointment.

Hi Tav,

NICE already publish guidelines on what needs to be done to gain approval of a diagnostics test in the UK.

https://www.nice.org.uk/about/what-we-do/our-programmes/nice-guidance/nice-diagnostics-guidance

Then you have the National Screening Committee that needs to decide if a national screening programme is viable based, amongst other factors, on the metrics for the best available technologies.

At the moment the US has huge loopholes for LDT's but those days are coming to an end and that is why I raised the issue of stricter FDA oversight with the company. I wasn't convinced by Burrows response.

It is true that you can ask a doctor to arrange a PSE , both in the US and the UK. It would have to be paid for privately and not all doctors will agree if they know it is not an approved test incorporated into relevant guidance. Burrows spent some time discussing how Arrivo and Mathis are belatedly tasked with getting our tests into those guidelines. God knows how they will do that based on 170 tests done in the prostogram project.

Thanks Dibs,

Think of it as an apology-in-kind for having been presumptious in my belief that a sales figure, detailed in a section dedicated to the post reporting period, actually referred to the post-reporting period.

;)

Hi Tav,

I suspect the absence of validation to a standard required for formal approval by regulators is one big reason why doctors may be reluctant to use the tests. The test itself can do patients no harm, but if there was a systematic difference in biomarkers by ethnic group or other genetic factors and they gave bad advice as a result they could be inviting a world of trouble.

@Bozi.

I don't think the drop has been triggered by the abysmal sales figures in isolation. It's a combination of factors.

We have no cash and a placing is imminent (unless they sell off or licence assets in record time).

The CEO has come across as untrustworthy. First with respect to sales figures (exponential growth in June/July has become 'an expected drop in sales through the summer months. Likewise sales were to be driven by P2P advocacy in June/July, but now the slump was due to one sales guy being ill towards year end).

The absence of a clear and credible sales strategy is also an issue. Why is it only now they are realising the importance of a persuasive cost-benefit analysis?

Burrows also did a good impersonation of a guy that had only just heard about the Transform Prostate screening trial. Astonishing for a guy leading a company pushing a new prostate test as one of its showcase products.

I could go on but don't want to keep repeating what has already been said in the thread. The drop in SP is only to be expected, Personally I think.it will be closer to 10p before the drop eases off.

I don't think pricing is the issue. There will always be folks that will happily pay that in the hope the PSE test helps them avoid a biopsy. Besides the majority of private customers will have costs covered by their insurers. If we are dependent on individual sales the sad reality is OBD will not generate enough profit to cover its operating costs. We need doctors on board and seem to be having insurmountable problems convincing them in the numbers required.

@Bozi

Rather than complaining about shareholders exercising their right to sell following an appalingly bad update, why not write to the company and let them know your disatisfaction with the results and the performance of our CEO?