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Iaintittle:
Let's look at the figures comparing EMH with ZNWD:
EMH: Indicated and Inferred resource of 7.18 Million tons of Lithium Carbonate Equivalent (LCE), plus 262,600 tons of Tin. MCAP of £115,155,270 with 165,691,059 shares in issue at 69.5 pence.
ZNWD: Indicated and Inferred resource of 665,000 tons of LCE; minimal Tin; up to 32,000 tons p.a. of Potassium Sulphate for fertilizer and aggregate tailings for building industry. MCAP of £31,791,422 with 205,105,957 shares in issue at 15.5 pence.
Have always regarded EMH as being significantly de-risked owing to its close integration with CEZ and the Czech State, even though this may mean some bureaucracy. My understanding is that there is both high grade vertical integration production-wise and a strong will at the highest levels to facilitate Cinovec's success. GLA and keep safe.
Candlestick, Diversified, Chester18: Great to hear your well-researched views. It may be worth repeating comments from a study published by an investigating group in Milan, Italy (21st Feb, 2020) regarding metastatic renal (kidney) cell carcinoma, which compared Parsortix to AdnaTEST (Adnagen AG, Germany):
"Mean Parsortix recovery rates were 81% (range 75-90%). The CTCs recovered through Parsortix method were stained with phycoerythrin-labelled antibodies, which lead to no significant loss of cells. These labelled cells were analysed using the DEPArray system. The possibility to obtain reliable molecular data on the molecular features of single CTCs opens new perspectives......single cell analysis of CTCs unlocks the presence of hidden clones with metastatic potential."
Newland knows that the FDA will demand highly reproducible results from Parsortix testing. Newland told us in October, 2019, that there is constant product improvement (PL 1 being replaced with PL 1.5). FDA demand inspection of results from 20 Parsortix machines used twice daily for 20 days. Newland has already responded to the FDA's anxiety about "off-label" (rogue) cassettes, by engineering a chip into each genuine Parsortix cassette which can only "handshake" with a genuine Parsortix machine.
Newland concluded with a comment: "The FDA is supportive and it's in their interests to encourage."
Combine this with the neglect of cancer patients owing to Covid-19 and President Biden's declared wishes to reconcentrate on cancer sufferers. Any examination of the excess deaths here in the UK which are running at a very high rate demonstrates that cancer patients are being neglected and there will need to be a re-focus.
GLA and keep safe.
Parob: Once again, thanks so much for your incredible vigilance. Interesting to note that the one other share I own which has Warren Buffett like potential has a clutch of similarly observant posters. Quality companies attract quality posters! In both cases, I am deeply grateful.
Zak Mir has included ITX in today's "Multibaggers" review on Share Talk/Bulletin Board Heroes. I know some folk may disparage such inclusions, but the fundamentals, albethey as yet unconfirmed by RNS, appear very encouraging. It is exactly why your remarkable surveillance, Parob, is so useful in giving we LTH an insight into product expansion and the long-term outlook.
Also, most encouraged by the appointment of Helen Cane as VP Operations. She has an impressive CV with chemical majors. Everything to play for here, in my opinion. Thanks so much again. GLA and keep safe.
RichKen: Thanks for your overview. I think that posters who have read any of my posts on EMH, ITX, TRX and the inevitable AVCT and ODX will know that I try to present a balanced view. I just wanted to make a comment, which is absolutely not a deramp, regarding the potential of fetal-cell screening. Andrew Newland made it very clear at the 2019 AGM that his Board had made an in-depth cost vs benefit analysis on fetal screening. The potential is very considerable indeed, but the cost to the Company of mounting what would have to be a multi-hundred-thousand person trial would have been in the tens if not hundreds of millions. He qualified this by saying that if an NGO or governmental organisation financed such a survey, AGL would be willing to consider participating.
The clinical issue here is the completely non-invasive capture through a blood draw of fetal cells which can be gene-mapped for conditions such as Down's Syndrome (an abnormal tripling of Chromosome 21 called Trisomy 21). Currently, detecting such fetal abnormalities requires a sample of amniotic fluid which carries a small risk of causing miscarriage, but does give a definitive result.
Anyway, the long and the short of it from a corporate point of view is that Newland decided, certainly wisely at this stage in the Company's development, to concentrate on the common and pernicious metastatic breast cancer, with ovarian/pelvic mass as their second exploration. Fetal screening remains a possibility, but much further down the line.
Hi Sam 12345 and others: Tempting to sell isn't it? The rest of this post is going to sound arrogant and patronizing, but I don't mean it like that. They say that any real apprenticeship demands 10,000 hours of committed time. I reckon I've done my time and Gawd streuth have I made mistakes. What I have learned is that, very rarely, an opportunity arises where a balanced risk assessment comes out very firmly in the positive AND the SP is irrationally low. I firmly believe that ITX is in that rare category. Once you find those rare gems, I have also learned to hang in there whatever the ups and downs of the SP and main market sentiment.
To me, ITX fulfils many of the Warren Buffett criteria:
1) Neglected share which has not yet come to big-scale awareness (his cigar-butt shares).
2) Price does not yet reflect true value or potential.
3) Company has a moat- IP well protected; high barrier to entry.
4) Buffett likes consumer staple Companies (Coca-Cola, Heinz etc).
As most of you know his attitude is to buy big early on; ignore the market wobbles; be a real OWNER of the Company by hanging in there for at least ten years, if not forever. He very, very rarely top-slices.
Although Buffett likes Companies with steady dividends, we don't have that for ITX. However, if they continue on the very low-risk, but high return pathway they are on, dividends become a possibility. This sounds like a ramp, but I don't mean any of this vacuously. I'm absolutely not a pump-and-dump guy and I'm totally happy being very, very patient. GLA.
Olderandwiser: A number of cancers typically grow quickly in an unbridled way. The incredibly complex systems which govern cell multiplication become disabled, so you can end up with a run-away growth of a tumour. Chemotherapeutic drugs are used to try and damp down this run-away cell multiplication. But, these drugs are often non-specific. They damp down any tissue in the body that normally has a high turn-over. Hair cells, cells lining the gut and blood cells (white and red blood cells) have high turn over and these get caught up in the action. Thus, hair loss, gastro-intestinal disturbance and both anaemia (low red-cell count) and leukopaenia (low white-cell count) can be quite serious side effects. The lowering of the white-cell count can be particularly dangerous in that the white-cells are the body's defence cells against infection. Chemotherapy treatments can therefore make people very sick when they are already fighting a cancer.
Yes, Avacta's (AVCT) AVA6000 is the first example of their pre|CISION technology regarding the use of one drug called Doxorubicin, which is a commonly used chemotherapy agent. The drug molecule is combined with a carrier agent which has been genetically tuned to latch on to the surface proteins of the tumour. By this means, the drug preferentially targets the tumour. This means that much lower doses of the drug Doxorubicin are needed to have the same effect as an untargeted version. This reduces the whole-body side effects considerably, including the well known heart-toxic effect of Doxorubicin.
This is just one example of targeted chemotherapy. Crucially, it is vital to know the genetic composition of the tumour so that the carrier agent can be tuned to the tumour. This is where Parsortix comes in, being able to harvest living tumour cells which can be genome mapped and also used as living in-vitro mini-tumours against which the drug-carrier molecules can be tuned to maximise their specific tumour-targeting ability.
As you will appreciate, the potential here is absolutely huge and the benefit to cancer sufferers potentially immeasurable. AGL and its unique and patented Parsortix technology has much to play for. GLA.
Specialonek and others ref. consolidation: A 100 into 1 share consolidation is not impossible. Avacta (AVCT) performed such a manoeuvre in early 2016, consolidating their 6.7 Billion shares down to 67 Million. Since then, they have diluted to about 250 M shares. If TRX ever considered a Nasdaq listing (and why not?), there is a lower limit of value in order to qualify. Much of their future revenue will be US based and their main plant is in Texas. Stranger things have happened. Personally, very positive on TRX and hanging on for the long-term. GLA and keep safe.
ddubya and other good folk: I have spent many hours trawling through hundreds of posts going back to 2016 on this and the ADVFN board. It's quite revealing.
One of my conclusions (among several) is that Samsung realized that they could play Edelman. M.E. was something of a narcissist, needing to pander to the big boys. The challenge for Samsung was, from the date of the announcement of the Nano/Dow deal (23rd January, 2013), to avoid a head-on confrontation with Dow. Bullies pick on the small-fry; Dow is no small fry. Samsung always complained about Dow's pricing of their Trevista dots and Dow got distracted by their merger with du Pont. Samsung kept M.E. on the hook with suggestions of dual supply and other false promises. There are two quotes from December, 2016 which are quite revealing:
Edelman: "Samsung will be very significant for our partner, Dow........ Branded TV at CES in January, 2017, with our Dots will be Hisense."
Poster on the ADVFN Board: "To me, it seems that a lot of politics is being played out by Samsung and the Chinese (TCL and Hisense) in the hope that Nanoco fails."
By late 2016, a lot of things had changed. Whilst Nanoco had attracted interest from Merck and Wah-hong, Samsung, meanwhile, had spent $70M buying the IP from QD Vision (Lexington, Massachusetts) to do with QD display and QLED, and they were already on to their third generation QD TVs, which they announced at CES, Jan 2017. It may be significant to note that QD Vision had IP for its own batch process, albeit to do with Cadmium Dots.
Interestingly, as an aside, LG, whilst rejecting Dow's QDs from early 2015 onwards, were, by January, 2017, referring to "Nano-Cell", a concept they have just expanded with their claim to the trademark title "QNED"(Quantum NanoCell Emitting Diode). LG bought substantial IP relating to OLED and WOLED from Eastman-Kodak in 2009.
Critically important for Nanoco's law-suit is just what batch process Samsung/Hansol had IP for in 2013-2017. There's no doubt that Samsung Advanced Institute for Technology (SAIT) had explored QDs from 2001 onwards and, by the time of Nano's IPO in May, 2009, SAIT had at least 150 Patents relating to QDs. Samsung licensed IP from Nanosys regarding Indium-Phosphor. What I can't quite establish is whether, prior to its engagement with Nanoco, Samsung/Hansol relied on the high-temperature (c.350 degrees) dual-injection process which they had licensed from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). That process is very different from the lower temperature (c.200 degrees) Nanoco molecular seeding process.
My guess is that Samsung played Edelman and took advantage of Dow's distraction with its merger. Edelman sucked up to "the Big S", as he called them, and he gave them some of Nano's trade secrets. I suspect that Samsung somehow bought Dow off. Dow had spent some $40M on their Cheonan plant so it must have been more than brown envelopes! The rest is history, sadly.
DD77, Thordon, Wololol and other good folk: My target is the $75M revenue per annum that could be achieved and has been talked about. On a very rough calculation, could that mean a profit of, say, £20M to £30M p.a.? On an undemanding P/E ratio of 15, a top figure of £30M annual profit would, given no dilution of the 432M shares in issue, suggest a MCAP of about £450M, thus an SP in the region of £1.00. I think we will be taken out a long time before that. The challenge for a big-cap like Croda (current MCAP of around £9B) is growth. They would not wait until ITX has maxed out on its CAGR.
If ITX engineered products in the plastics space, that would change things considerably on the up-side. Whatever, the prospects look very enticing indeed. Hanging in here whatever and I would add on any substantial weakness. No temptation to sell anytime soon. GLA and keep safe.
neo2725 and others: Thanks very much for very interesting comments about the huge potential for Parsortix and its ability to capture live Circulating Tumour Cells(CTC). This is a major advance for several reasons:
1) Live CTCs can be cultured as a mini living tumour.
2) These CTCs can be genome-sequenced.
3) Importantly, post-mortem specimens have shown a considerable variation in the genetic constitution from one area of the tumour to the next. Thus, liquid biopsy and multiple CTC capture can give a wide-spread reading of the genetic variation within one tumour. A single surgical biopsy may not give a broad picture of this variation. Surgical biopsy can be traumatic and repeat biopsy more so.
4) The dream-ticket in oncology is targeted chemotherapy. That is to say strapping the drug to a genetically targeted "missile" to specifically attack only tumour cells. This reduces the often very destructive side effects of chemotherapy which, hitherto, have a whole-body (not tumour specific) effect. Cultured CTCs harvested by Parsortix can be used as laboratory (in vitro) specimens against which to try old and new chemotherapy drugs in perfect safety.
5) In metastatic breast cancer(MBC) it has become known (partly thanks to Parsortix) that the CTCs form clusters. These clusters may enhance the spreading of the cancer. Newland was very smart in choosing AGL's first target as MBC. MBC is harrowingly very common and the combination of CTCs and CTC clusters form a perfect target for Parsortix.
6) Genomic sequencing is one of the medical growth industries and technologies are improving drastically and rapidly. Parsortix is, therefore, perfectly timed to ride alongside to give very profound benefits to cancer sufferers as a minimally invasive and broad-spectrum technology to assist the pharmaceutical industry in the treatment of a wide variety of cancers.
Good luck everybody and please keep safe in these dark times.
Scardey_cat: I know this is way off topic as far as good old AVCT is concerned, but you did ask! We started with a near derelict Ifor Williams 4-wheeled trailer. I then designed the timber structure and we three fettled away in my garage, with the slowly growing tiny-house in my side garden. We used as much scavenged timber as we could find. I tend to over-engineer things, but it all turned out well in the end. The couple were fantastic, both unworldly artists but totally prepared to put their hand to anything. Imagine a house about 15 foot long, 7 foot wide, inclined roof, little sit-out stoop at the rear. The wheeled chassis allows it to be towed around. Enormous fun and learned so much.
DOH85: Well Banksy hasn't done so badly in a slightly different sphere! I've been very, very lucky with my education, but, at the end of the day, it's the craftspeople for whom I would always make space. From the Lucas apprentice who helped me with driving machine tools, to the coachtrimmer who taught me how to upholster a car. Invariably, these guys are real Princes: they would happily share their skills and talents with scruffy urchins like me. They never asked for anything back; indeed, the debt I owe them is utterly unrepayable. My only way of honouring them has been to hand on what I know. Like spending the most of 2019 helping a homeless couple build a tiny-house.
Truly no backhand intended. I've spent 46 years of my life in my garage fettling timber, metal and leather in my hobby. I retain the utmost respect for people who use their hands. The people who know me would attest to that. My uncle built his own houses. My grand-dad was a Perkins Diesel apprentice. The schoolmaster who taught me carpentry remains one of my most admired teachers.
DOH85: Absolutely brilliant post. It made my day! You're wasted as a builder. You give the Clarkson on the inside back page of the Sunday Times a very good run for his money. Actually, I rather read more of yours than his any day of the week. Simply superb!
Scotlouie, Dibs61, Chester18 and others: Great to hear from you. Very decent intelligent board and it's always been like this. Very encouraging to see a late surge in the SP. American buying?? This is my only long-term hold that's still underwater, although my ISA holding is very close to evens. Made the mistake of buying too heavily early on and not allowing room on my strict portfolio balance to average down. Have learnt a lot from this share!
Anyway, over the years, I've made extensive notes, including from the AGM in October, 2019. I have a listing of the Patents, the principal artist for whom is George Hvichia. Newland is very decent and very bright and also very ambitious. No, he has no plans for an early exit.
The main contenders in this space include Thermo-Fisher, Precision Med Inc, Exact Sciences (who bought out Genomic Health for $2.8B on July 29th, 2019), Abbott, Invitek of Berlin, Germany, Illumina Inc, Guardant, Qiagen (Netherlands). I may have missed some out.
The only other similar technology with FDA clearance is CellSearch (Menarini Silicon Biosystems Inc, HQ in Florence, Italy). This technology relies on bead-based separation. The FDA ticket applies to breast, colo-rectal and prostate cancers.
AGL's main collaboration is with Abbott with regard to HER-2 FISH (Human epidermal growth factor receptor; Fluorescent In-situ Hybridization). Newland's vision is to engineer a hybrid of Parsortix and the Abbott HER-2 and then seek further FDA clearance.
AGL also has a collaboration with the medical instrument maker Philips and with Qiagen at St. Bart's Hospital, London.
Newland declared his ambition at the 2019 AGM as follows: To become a large cap business following in the footsteps of companies like Illumina. His target is to achieve a mcap of £5B within 7 to 10 years. He said he would never license Parsortix technology exclusively to one company. He was confident that both Conifer and Jupiter would remain loyal institutional investors. Sadly, of course, Jupiter has not honoured this and accounts for the parlous decline in the SP.
His two main foci are: firstly metastatic breast cancer for which the FDA de Novo application has been submitted; secondly, ovarian/pelvic mass. There are several other areas for which Parsortix is deemed appropriate including small and non-small cell lung cancer, prostate, melanoma, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, renal carcinoma, colo-rectal cancers and glioblastoma(brain cancer). There is active research using Parsortix in all these areas at various medical centres round the globe.
So, it's been an interesting ride so far and likely to be even more interesting in the future. Newland is taking the long view!
GLA.
SMISHMAN: Thank you. I really appreciate your comment. I believe that Colin King is a very decent and hard-working CEO. I believe he cares for his staff (hence an extended Christmas/New Year break for his very, very hard-working Team). I am impressed by the near doubling of ODX's in-house staff. We know that ODX has installed additional manufacturing machinery. I imagine that CK would be extremely good at liasing fruitfully with the other members of the Rapid Testing Consortium, and he is absolutely NOT given to any sort of over-promising. Any limitations would, I think, be imposed upon him and are not intrinsic to the business. Thank you again and I do hope you are safe and well in these almost catastrophic times.
Greg22: Thanks so much and I am much saddened to hear of the disabilities you have cruelly suffered. I do wish you well.
Your experience stands you in very good stead. Exceptional, I would say, and therefore of great benefit to us. With your deep experience of the H1N1 influenza virus, you will be very well acquainted with the 1918/1919 so-called "Spanish 'flu" pandemic. In my view, that pandemic has much to teach us in terms of quarantine measures, mutation of the virus into an extremely deadly variant in the second wave (severe, acute respiratory collapse that, I believe, became known as "the blue death" owing to rapid onset of fatal cyanosis) and the fact that migration became a hugely important factor in global infection. You will be aware of the work of Prof. Michael Worobey at the University of Arizona and his thoughts on transmission from other species (? bats, pigs, birds and horses) and his work on what prior minor influenza epidemics may have imbued immunity to certain age groups.
Anyway, I ramble, but thank you and please share any further professional insights with us. I repeat, special thoughts to you and I do hope you are keeping safe and well.
Greg22, Harryfife : Balanced, intelligent posts, in my view, so thank you. I cannot possibly agree with you, Scharnhorst, that antibody testing is a red herring. I would appreciate hearing about your professional qualifications as a virologist or epidemiologist.
Intelligent, well informed posters will have already understood that we are very much in the grip of government spiel. The current govt priority is vaccine roll-out. Condescendingly, BJ does not want to mix messages with talk of testing, either antigen or antibody. BJ wants to savour his moment of glory with an announcement about a "sovereign" antigen test and, in due course, a "sovereign" rapid antibody test.
With all the uncertainties about the efficacy of the AZN vaccine and its revised inoculation timings, new variants, challenges of logistical roll-out, BJ will not, for the moment, want to cast doubt on the vaccines with talk of efficacy checking via antibody testing. Also, BJ will not want to inculcate any sense of complacency in those who are shown to be sero-positive for IgG antibodies. In addition, there needs to be some form of system for data collection and person-specific passporting.
The epidemiological community will be screaming for such tests to be done and for an appropriate data-base. That's what epidemiologists do. Dr Chris Whitty is already talking about the need for scrutiny of the epidemic into 2022. You can't scrutinize the epidemic without high-quality testing.
Proper investors in a company such as ODX will take a longer-term view and make a balanced risk assessment. Few think that Covid-19 and its variants will be all over by the Summer. Some investors will make demands about frequent RNSs, despite the declared NDAs and the considerable complexity of creating the best possible quality tests in very short time intervals.
As a retired medical professional, I'm very content to be patient. I've delved very deeply into the historical aspects of pandemics, the viral bio-genetics and the current epidemiology. I've run a business for 26 years and have some insights into corporate life and I believe that ODX is well managed and has considerable potential. Furthermore, from the ethical standpoint, ODX has much to contribute to quelling the grip this virus holds over us. Please forgive me if I sound arrogant and conceited, but I am just stating things as I find them. GLA and please keep safe.
Thanks to all for keeping us up to date on the court proceedings. Just to get one or two important time-lines established:
1) The date of the crucial Patent #US 7,588,828 B2 is September 15th, 2009.
2) The established longevity of a Patent is 20 years, possibly extensible for a further one year.
3) Samsung registered trademark "QLED" on 27th June, 2016.
4) Collaboration between Samsung and Nanoco existed as late as 2017 in terms of joint presentation at one of the electronics shows.
5) In a Nano RNS, Edelman referred to informal challenge by Nano to Samsung ref. alleged IP theft made in March, 2019.
6) Failure to agree terms following that informal challenge led Nano to pursue law suit.
7) In a subsequent Nano RNS, Edelman made it quite clear that Nano's lawyers would take a very dim view of efforts by Samsung to delay Court proceedings (they obviously expected such tricks from Samsung's prior form).
Aside from the inevitable lawyer game-playing, I think the recent announcement of LG's venture into QDs is significant, they having resisted QDs from early 2015. The crucial question is whether Nano's critical Patent is truly foundational in terms of the molecular seeding process and the QD variants that emanate from that process. Has LG somehow side-stepped Nano's process and is this a reason for Samsung seeking delay, in order to explore the LG process further? If LG has managed to side-step the Nano Patent, it would possibly strengthen Samsung's case. As I've said before, Samsung has missed a trick in not registering "QNED" as a trademark, even if the Samsung derivation (Nanorods) appears to be very different from the LG derivation.
A great deal of this is determined by the politics. As several posters have intimated, the govt is obliged to ship in the poor quality Innova tests in the absence of anything better available at the moment. The Abbott test is pretty poor, too.
Given Johnson's triumphalistic tendencies, he will want to cook up a "Sovereign" LFT antigen test. We have indications that the govt is assisting with procurement of machinery. He did not mention testing in his TV broadcast last night as he desperately needs folk to abide by the lockdown rules. He doesn't want to risk his vaccine emphasis being confused at this stage by talk of the other escape route of antigen testing. In any event, he has to await the tender (closes 15th Jan; Contracts announced Feb 5th). At some point thereafter, he will make some sort of announcement, with appropriate fanfare, of the great British effort to create these rapid LFTs which will help to open the country up. Both ODX and AVCT will have a major hand in this by the looks of things. GLA.