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Mr A, I've just seen one of my friends who's RAF and lives in the Netherlands. He's come over here on a visit with his partner. For the two of them to travel here, the PCR testing runs at around £700 due to the need for testing on both sides.
Clearly this is not viable for many people and a different solution is needed.
Lots of people are at risk because they don't look after themselves. Being obese is one of the major risk factors which never seems to get discussed because it's not PC these days. It's one of the reasons the US death toll is so bad.
Should a person who eats healthy food, exercises and looks after themselves - but who isn't vaccinated be refused treatment?
Meanwhile, a person who is unhealthy, eats endless junk and is obese - but who is vaccinated is given treatment?
Whats the difference?
This topic has been covered many times. If the Government want it to be for home use, they will just do the same again - put it in their NHS packaging and get the MHRA to make it so, like they did with Innova.
It's an easier test to use. Don't see this as an obstacle personally.
Exactly Timster. I think PI's forget these funds don't try and nail their entry and exit points down to a few pence, because they can't. Positions have to be slowly built and slowly sold off unless it's share with big trading volumes. They would have to pay well over the ask or sell well below the bid in order to get any volume on Avacta to complete their trades.
Furthermore, when they've seen good returns they will take profits and reduce their exposure. The funds are about consistent performance over a period of time. PI's are about making money quickly and are generally prepared to take more risk, from what I've seen anyway.
I'm pretty sure there was a fund who sold out of Avacta just before the share price took off in the spring of last year. It really doesn't mean anything.
Great RNS, I think this one has arrived more quickly than any of us expected us too. Really pleased to see another one released intraday. It should help to stop the 'sell on the bell' crew when there's no RNS at 7am, which results in the share price being eroded daily during quieter periods.
I've also jumped on the bangwagon of contacting the UK newspapers.
Hopefully at least a couple will take note and run the story. It's great news for us, but there's no real pressure on HMG until the British public are aware of this information.
Exactly manybens, and if you put that comment alongside the capacity issue I've mentioned below the two things fit together.
Equally, it could just mean Innova are going to be knocking them out in Wales instead.
Looking on Bidstats (very briefly, not in detail) the first Innova order was on 19 October and the big ones started in November. So that's 33 weeks ago.
1b divided by 25m is 40. So that's 40 weeks. I appreciated it wouldn't have been 25m per week straight out the gates, of course. This is just some very approximate maths.
Bad news for us, as it would be that in the absolute best case scenario there's still another 7 weeks of Innova tests left, in reality there's way more than that.
BUT...
We would be unable to fill that capacity immediately anyway, so in the event we are the so called 'sovereign test' it's likely to be the case that Innova are phased out whilst we are phased in. Even if our test were to be chosen as the UK's new LFT of choice, we couldn't replace Innova immediately as we wouldn't be able to make them fast enough.
Something interesting to take away from this article is it states the UK is getting through 25m lateral flow tests per week.
Do we have any information on how many lateral flow tests HMG bought for it's 1.2 billion quid? That would tell us long the current stockpiles might last.
BZ, I've defended you in the past as sometimes you have some good input. I believe we we in BIDS together earlier this year also. But currently you're just aggravating people and I'm not sure what you are hoping to achieve.
When you decide you don't like a share anymore, just quietly move on. Don't go back onto it's bulletin board and start upsetting people. Very poor form.
With the share price at current levels and Conifer selling down, there's probably a few slightly nervous investors here. First of all, there's various reasons why Conifer might be selling down and it's not necessarily any reflection on Avactas prospects.
Secondly, the big question here is 'can Avacta actually commercialise the test?' Personally what I'm looking to see here is sales into Europe. As has been said many times, there's no market in the UK at present unless we are to become the elusive 'sovereign test' and I don't trust HMG. For anybody who is feeling nervous at present, I refer you to the follow extract from the 7th June RNS...
"We are very excited by the potential of this high-quality SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen test and by the interest it has already attracted from potential commercial partners and distributors. We will continue to focus on its commercial roll-out and manufacturing scale-up to meet demand."
"WE WILL CONTINUE TO FOCUS ON MANFACTURING SCALE UP TO MEET DEMAND."
At this point in time, Sir Al must surely know what the realistic level of interest is in the AffiDX test. I can't see any reason he would set himself up for immediate failure if this were not the case. He's always said supply and not demand will be the issue, and only 2 days ago he was still saying the same thing. If it weren't looking favourable, I would expect to see some management of investors expectations - as suggesting we can sell every test we can make without any sales subsequently materialising would not reflect well on him. On the basis there's been no such comments and he remains bullish about sales volumes, I'm comfortable.
Bella I would be inclined to agree with you on this. If the agency have a good working relationship with the MHRA, one would think they'll expedite. Furthermore, if it's only an error and not a total mess - I wouldn't have thought the MHRA are going to be putting us at the bottom of the pile and then looking at it again starting from scratch. They'll likely check the error has been corrected, give it another once over and we'll be back on track.
It's a shame to see another timeline slip, but hopefully this is the final thing which sits outside of Avacta's control and is likely to cause any delays. I know Sir Al has a bad rep for missing deadlines, but 14 months in and I'm yet to see anything delivered late which he could've done anything about. I always find in life that when I let something go outside of my control, it goes wrong. I'm sure that's how Sir Al is feeling at the moment too. This said, I do hope he's learnt to under promise and over deliver! The market loves that, and hates missed timescales.
To finish on a positive note, our test is about to launch! We've been told numerous times we'll sell everything we can make and I don't see any reason that won't be true. The money will be flowing in very soon...
Despite the positive wording of this RNS, I hope you do realise these results are not very good and quite some way behind the competition, who are also well ahead in terms of taking their products to market?
t4g, absolutely, I agree that HMG won't continue with Innova. The public confidence isn't there. Furthermore, another line of defence is needed and Innova just won't cut it.
It's probable, some would say certain, that the current vaccines will begin to cease working at some point soon. Whether this happens slowly and they gradually become less efficacious until topped up by boosters (which would be workable), or a significant mutation (like something along the lines of the Indian so called "double mutant" strain, or the Tanzanian strain) where the vaccines could be rapidly rendered obsolete is the big question. This would leave a gap whilst new ones were developed followed by the program being repeated again.
This could result in lockdowns again. But a robust system built around LFT's could stop this happening.
The LinkedIn tweet from a while back indicated that ODX and AVCT are connected. This fits with the AVCT and Mologic relationship. It's a fairly straight line.
If I'm right, and I think I am, CE marking and commerical launch of AffiDX is expected early May, so there's not long to wait to find out...
Megatro, the same thought crossed my mind actually. But I can't come up with a reason why Mologic would be cheaper than AffiDX. Not sure if you have done any research of Affimers (which the the reagent in the AffiDX test), they're supposed to be cost effective and relatively easy to manufacture. They're another step up from Aptamers so to speak. I think the Affimers reagents are likely to be cheaper, or at least in line with Aptamers. This is my speculation based on research, not fact, though.
Anyway... It also brings us back to the point of... why help Avacta make and a test and offer manufacturing capacity? If they were expecting to be selling their own test to HMG in vast quantities this would be a strange thing to do and wouldn't make commercial sense.
Surely there's only one reason they would offer up capacity, and that's because they expect the demand for AffiDX to be greater. If anybody else can offer a reasonable explanation for this I would be very interested.
I agree with you the Mologic test is better than Innova, it uses AN sampling as opposed to being a pharyngeal test dressed up as an AN test, I don't dispute what you are saying whatsoever in that regard.
However... with regards to comparable performance; here's AffiDX
"The study tested 98 positive samples (31 with Ct<26; 65 with Ct 26-30 and 2 with Ct 30-31). Avacta's rapid antigen test identified 96/98 of these correctly as positive with a 20 minutes read time resulting in a clinical sensitivity of 98.0%"
I've followed the Twitter link you sent me and looked in the comments, where there is a screenshot of the FIND report.
"Sensitivity Ct <25.... 96.4%"
So therefore Avacta are achieving a higher sensitivity which is also in mostly **samples where the virus is harder to detect.** It's doing better, in worse samples!
(Remember, the lower the PCR CT value, the easier it will be the for Lateral Flow to correctly identity the sample as positive.)
The Mologic tweet may be true in that Avacta don't have a CE mark yet (which is of course a formality and will happen), or is technically best in class because the Avacta test is S protein not N protein.
The fact is, the numbers are there for all to read and the AffiDX test is showing better performance.
So my point is this, IMO the UK Gov will either go for performance or for price. We don't know the prices of all three tests, but we can probably assume Innova will be cheapest, so that would probably be appealing from that angle.
I would guess that Mologic and AffiDX will be in the same price ballpark, which if that's the case, why would the UK Gov chooser the lesser performing test - it wouldn't make sense. Furthermore, why would Mologic help develop the test and then GAD be handing over manufacturing capacity to Avacta to make a test worse than their own - again... this wouldn't make any sense at all. What would be the benefit of doing that?! Handing over capacity to make a test which won't sell as well... crazy and irrational to believe!?
So my point is - unless another private company comes from the left field and blindsides us all... it's almost certainly going to be Innova or AffiDX. Price, or performance.
I can't see ODX manufacturing the Innova tests. Innova's are already monstrous and expanding further... ODX would be a drop in the ocean, so why bother? They probably wouldn't.
AffiDX needs to be the 'Sovereign Test' and ODX need to be making it.
To move the share price on in the short term, Avacta need to be the so called 'sovereign test' and ODX need to be making it. This is the biggest catalyst which could occur, as difficult as it may be for those with a 'football team' mentality to absorb.
This is likely to happen it seems, probably at some point in May. There will be rewards here, but IMO they won't come about in the way that many ODX holders would like.
Todays ODX RNS showed the Mologic antigen test isn't as good. Therefore, the chances of that being the so called 'Sovereign Test' arent looking high.
Confirmation bias seems to stop many people here understanding the numbers which are there for them to read. For those who have read the numbers, it's easy to see why ODX is down today. This may also be why AVCT is up, even after the closing auction last night already pushing the price up yesterday evening. The odds on for the AffiDX have increased, as Mologics test was a potential threat. Now it isn't.
For ODX, the biggest risk is AVCT not being the sovereign test, and the government going with Innova who are working on increasing their capacity. This would also hurt AVCT too, but Europe would soften that for them hopefully.
Rollyroll, if it makes you feel better the charts and tea leaves suggest that selling now and hoping for a pull back would not be a good move. We're in an ascending triangle pattern which should complete over the coming few sessions.
If we drop out the pattern that's not good, but I can't see there's much motivation to sell out at this point. The profit taking seems to have already happened from those who want to move on. So basically, a break to the downside doesn't seem likely unless we get some unexpected bad news.
We need to break above 272 ish, and we need close above that level at the end of the days trading. The traders will be in for their 10%, which should push us onwards to about 300p. There might be a slight pullback with profit taking, but even with a notable pull back 272 ish should be our new support level, where currently it is resistance.
If nothing bad happens, it's going onwards to around 300p on good news or technicals.
Bottomzup, do you think the same?
Please note: If anything happens, all of the above will go out the window as news overides charts. But in the absence of anything notable happening, that's how it should play out. Especially as the anticipation builds.
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