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Lord O’Neill of Gatley a former Treasury Minister and now head of a commission on antimicrobial resistance is quoted in The Times today (16 January 2023) saying it was “insanity” for doctors to be encouraged to prescribe antibiotics for strep A without widespread testing. He also said “We must introduce affordable diagnostic tests for prescribing”.
Do Novacyt have the contacts and wherewithal to follow up comments like this ?
Message to Marketing department at Novacyt,
How about following this lead up immediately by placing some professionally focused advertising in C&D ( Chemist & Druggist) instead of Twitter and try to raise awareness of what Novacyt has to offer to help UK pharmacies in this area. A reference to what Tata is doing in India would not go amiss.
This is an opportunity to follow up now in my opinion,
P.S. Thanks Saintsmith for bringing it to our notice.
Here is a message I sent yesterday to the Display advertising team at the Biomedical Scientist. If I receive a reply I will post it here:
Dear Display advertising manager & colleagues at The Biomedical Scientist,
You may have heard your publication has been mentioned several times recently on shareholder platforms at Novacyt.
Can you tell me ( without giving any names if you prefer) if you have ever approached the company for display advertising and if so, what sort of response you had?
Many Novacyt shareholders now suspect that the management at Novacyt thinks posting messages on Facebook suffices in this highly competitive market.
We also wonder if the company directors understand the importance of interacting with industry decision makers and being noticed in the specialist sectors they operate.
Any comments you can give me would be most welcome and I will discuss them with other Novacyt shareholders asap.
Yours
GDWK
Shareholder in Novacyt.
This story on Facebook today is an example of where Novacyt could help the NHS. But getting that message across must be an exceedingly difficult task: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02sDNBgfpknZHP8mibDNJgo6YhtgRoKwRbzRkaFhz6gYPskttigzfDTLt9RtXYsgb2l&id=100014990102496
I noticed from recent posts that Indian Union Minister of State for Science & Technology Dr Jitendra Singh said, the prime objective of the government is to reduce import dependence from 80% to below 30% in next 10 years and ensure self-reliance quotient of 80% in Med-Tech.
As this seems to be the longer term aim, I wondered if Novacyt has considered setting up an manufacturing subsidiary in India. This might be a good use of our unused cash and protect our export business for the future.
Kaeren,
Fair comment -I forgot about the CTDA approval hurdle. Maybe Biosynex are selling it perhaps? It would be interesting to know from Novacyt if they are having any sales success.
I decided to find out where one can buy this new test. First to reply was Dam Health who said they only sell nasal tests. When I asked again if they had heard of the Novacyt Saliva Test product they replied immediately:
?
Dear Sir,
We do not sell these products. You can check out our products at dam-health.com
Best Regards.
Balazs
Kind Regards
DAM Health
Suite 4102 Charlotte House Queens Dock Business Centre
67-83 Norfolk Street Liverpool L1 0BG Merseyside
I wonder if James Wakefield or any of the Novacyt BoD reads The Times?
In today’s edition James Warner, a business journalist who also sits on a number of company boards writes: “One lesson I learnt…. was the value of increased frequency of updates to the stock market. Keep things simple. Communicate more often. That way, you are much more likely to carry your people, customers and investors with you through the great unknowns.”
Maybe we should invite James Warner to join our Board?
Wilson63 & Pierrick, apologies from me. It is six months and a bit since filing and acceptance NOT 9 months.
It is still worth chasing up and let’s hope the company is doing so. Over to you Mandy!
Good question Pierrick. As it’s now over nine months since the application was filed, perhaps you should ask Mandy for an update OR you could ask the attorney mentioned in the application.
The latest report from The Good Law Project in court today should make Han**** & Bethell squirm: “In Court today, it was revealed that the senior civil servant responsible for the antibody testing team fretted that the preferential treatment being given to Abingdon Health would mean that competitors “might complain”. And at one point, the Chief Commercial Officer at the Department of Health asked the accounting officer at the Department of Health to “have a quiet word with Bethell and explain to him that we could make this all a lot more legit if we just took two days to do a public call-to-arms to 'flush out' any other companies who might be able to play a role in this space, and remove the criticism that we haven’t given everyone a fair chance?”.
Today’s AGM shows Novacyt still lacks an understanding of how to promote itself positively. As a result the SP continues to drift or decline. My feedback comments after the presentation were as follows: “Although the intention was to be positive concerning the company's future there was nothing specific to excite e.g. news of Tata's involvement or any other major customers or contracts. Without a few nuggets you are never going to excite a journalist to write about Novacyt. Secondly Biosynex was not mentioned.
It does seem that the Board still does not understand how PR works and how to project the company to attract investors. Waffle and generalisations can only go so far without any specifics to excite and encourage a journalist to latch onto. This is an on-going problem which urgently needs attention.”
Not wanting to give DHSC any more ammunition but I do wonder if the BoD have been hoodwinked or incompetent because of this I posted on 25th Oct’21: InvestorSteve: Thanks for reminding us of this term of contract from DHSC:
“ The parties agree that where such new products are made available by the supplier, they may be ordered by the Authority under the terms of this agreement at the same price per reaction as (or less than) the price listed for the original good".
When I originally read this a long time ago it raised quite a few alarm signals to me.
Surely, I thought, no supplier could agree to this without clarification of how broadly this might be interpreted.
This question of what proportion of shareholders are French v UK makes me wonder if I am listed as a French shareholder too. Why? Because of this unhelpful message I received in Sept’21 from Hargreaves: “We have checked our records and can confirm that we will unfortunately not be able to facilitate voting at the Novacyt meeting. The reason for this is because Novacyt is an overseas registered security. In order to be able to hold and trade overseas stocks, Hargreaves Lansdown holds the stocks as CREST Depository Interests (CDIs) as under UK law foreign stocks cannot be handled directly in CREST (the UK settlement system).
CDIs are issued by CREST, and one CDI is the equivalent of one share of an eligible foreign stock. Essentially, for each stock available as a CDI, CREST has the required number of shares held in its name (or the name of an intermediary acting for it) at the central securities depository in the company’s home country (these are the foreign equivalents of CREST – for example, DTCC in the US, Euroclear in much of Europe, Clearstream in Germany, SIS in Switzerland).
As the shares are not held in the name of Hargreaves Lansdown, we are unable to submit voting requests for overseas General Meetings as we will not appear on the register of shareholders. We apologise for this inconvenience.“
Why the BoD must not allow Share Price to drift
https://www.sharesmagazine.co.uk/news/shares/mandatory-bid-leaves-photo-me-minorities-in-a-spin
Hamsters - I agree with your comment “ So in some ways forget about the BoD and the silence, focus on the fundamentals.”
I have concluded that it is BoD policy is to keep quiet until the DHSS dispute is finally concluded. It would not be wise nor gain sympathy to be shouting how well we are doing and how much money we are making until that time.
InvestorSteve: Thanks for reminding us of this term of contract from DHSC:
“ The parties agree that where such new products are made available by the supplier, they may be ordered by the Authority under the terms of this agreement at the same price per reaction as (or less than) the price listed for the original good".
When I originally read this a long time ago it raised quite a few alarm signals to me.
Surely, I thought, no supplier could agree to this without clarification of how broadly this might be interpreted.
If, for instance Novacyt spent several months research time and several millions of £s improving its testing equipment/methodology, could the customer say we won’t pay anything extra for this better product?
On the face of it, this seems to be what the customer is demanding.
So if the CEO or BoD or Plummer/legal counsel agreed to these terms I feel they should all have been shown the door.
Perhaps they have!