Member Info for hants

I don't believe this has been posted before. If it has, I'm sorry I'm a bit slow.

Christopher McMurran
Product Development Manager at Avacta

Product Development Manager
Avacta
Oct 2020 - Present 7 months

Rapid Test Systems Manager
Omega Diagnostics Group
Dec 2013 - Oct 2020 6 years 11 months

Planning, directing the activities of the development team to enable the development of novel rapid diagnostic tests and facilitate their transfer into Omega Diagnostic’s manufacturing facility.

* To write protocols to validate new equipment needed for both development and manufacture of rapid tests.

* The sourcing of suitable equipment to facilitate the completion of rapid test development projects.

* The sourcing of raw materials to allow the completion of lateral flow development projects and successful transfer to manufacturing (samples, antibodies, other biological raw materials).

Thought it was interesting and worth posting, as there's not much else to discuss for now! Although things might get spicy tomorrow depending on what the haystack has to say...

I'm sorry if this has already been posted, I've just seen this on the MSN home page but haven't been following the chat on here today.

Extract from The Guardian:

"Boris Johnson gives backing to domestic use of Covid passports"

“When it comes to trying to make sure that we give maximum confidence to business and to customers here in the UK, there are three things: your immunity, whether you’ve had it before, so you’ve got natural antibodies anyway; whether you’ve been vaccinated; and then, of course, whether you’ve had a test. And so those three things working together will, I think, be useful,” he said.

The way Boris has said that would indicate he believes the most important thing is a negative test - and rightly so! Vaccine doesn't mean you can't spread Covid-19, so that idea is obviously unworkable. To that effect, I think the Government are letting the vaccine passport stories run their course because they want to encourage the public to take the vaccines, even though the idea of a vaccine passport is fundamentally flawed (although the vaccines will of course help to reduce hospitalisation.)

To a large extent yes, however market makers can hold shares (and will generally do so as park of making a market, at least to some limited extent.) Yes there are two sides to every trade, but if an institutional investor is buying several millions pounds of shares... it's probably a good sign. They are likely to be better informed than private investors. Infact, I believe a lot of private investors don't do a great deal of research at all - something which is also apparent from some of the posts we see on this board!

I think it's likely to be a buy. It's difficult to say for certain as we don't know what period of time it was filled over. If it's been getting filled for a week, it would have to be a sell. However... the volume today was huge!

From 19th to 30th March, around 1m to 3m shares have been traded each day. Today alone, over 9m shares were traded. The order was for around 6.3m shares... therefore the majority, if not all of that order could've been filled today.

So yeah... can't be certain but the price and unusually high volume today would suggest to me it's a buy.

For those who haven't done so, log into your platform, open your Avacta chart and then select the volume indicator from the menus. You'll see how unusually high it is.

Even if there's no news, in a few days time we'll see a lot of people topping up their new ISA allowance and I'm sure a lot of that cash will find it's way into Avacta. I'm one of them.

Hello everyone, just checking in to add my vote of confidence! It's almost an entire year since I bought my Awacta shares now, it's been quite a journey so far and I remain as confident as ever.

No deadline has been missed. We were told around the end of Q1 - which to my mind is late March to early April. The sentiment of this board always follows the share price movements, not the facts. Sentiment has changed, but the facts remain the same.

Futthermore, lots of new stories at present about about vaccines passports for pubs and events - something which I feel is completely unacceptable and a huge infringement of peoples liberty and free choice. Regardless of personal opinion, one thing most people agree on is peoples right to choose. If the Conservatives imposed this, it was would lose them a huge number of votes in the next election. Forcing/bullying people to take it may also make the public more sceptical and reduce uptake. Also, it would probably make a lot of already struggling pubs go under too. However, asking people to take a test to prove they're negative is not an unreasonable request - assuming the test is cheap, convenient and easy to use.

Then there's the issue of testing in schools. Schools are a massive problem as you've got large members of people from different familes mixing and social distancing just isn't going to happen. The current tests are unfit for purpose and too difficult to use. They need to be replaced. We have strong reason to believe the replacement won't be Mologic or Surescreen (as has already been covered several times). Of course, it's possible another competitor appears out of the blue, but they would also need a reagent which can be manufactured at scale and that would be a problem if using conventional monoclonal antibodies. Ease of manfacture is one of the key benefits of Affimers, along with the sensitivity and specificity they allow.

In my opinion, it's highly likely the Government will push forward with a new testing program involving our LFA's. Not just because they've loaned manufacturing equipment, but because a backup plan is needed.

Things seems to be improving in the UK, however if Covid-19 mutates to evade the current vaccines, that strain will become the prevalent one and could undo the vaccination program within a matter of weeks. The program would then have to start over again once an updated vaccine was available. Short term re-opening aside, not to have a backup plan should the current vaccination program fail would be incredibly foolish.

Anyway... hope everyone is good.

Deadline not missed, everything is fine! Disaster would have meant an RNS, so it's fine and on track.

It's important to remember that we have been told "around the end of Q1"... this seems to have been interpreted by some as "by the end of March"

I wouldn't be suprised to get an RNS today, and equally wouldn't be suprised if was another 3 weeks.

Share price will do it's thing in the meantime.

There it is!
15-Mar-21 16:20:48 271.00 3,134 Buy* 270.00 271.00 8,493

Honestly never had so much difficulty in buying Avacta shares. I've had NT in the past many times, but not for that period of time.

The buying today truly was relentless. I was getting no trade for at least 2 hours, trying regularly. I eventually managed to buy £8500 of shares at around 4.20pm.

Boris walks in and with Sir Al, but who's the other guy walking in with them we all wonder?

Well sh*t the bed... It's Giles from directors talk!

Giles takes the reins and kicks it off in his usual soft tones...
"Joining us today is Alastair Smith, CEO at Avacta Group... Alastair, good evening."

"Good evening Giles."

Giles then proceeds to 'interrogate' Sir Al, as Sir Al pretends he didn't write all the questions himself... and starts every answer with his normal opener "Well, that's a great question Giles..."

Anyway... I'm off to do some work. Not sure why I'm bothering now, though. See you all Monday morning for 10 quid a share by 9am.

Annoying that one of the most important pieces of information is omitted, in that our test is Anterior Nasal but Surescreen / Innova are brain ticklers.

Great article, though. Hopefully other media outlets will sit up and pay attention now! Could be an interesting weekend...

Exactly Wiggly. Reading it quickly, one might interpret it as "CE marking by the end of March." Therefore, not going to be selling anything until then.

But actually, that's saying subsequent transfer of CE Mark to Avacta end of March, which is a totally different thing.

I agree the data is sufficient to CE mark. Therefore, we could hear further on this at any moment in time. Anybody thinking they can sit on the sidelines for a while is probably going to be in for a surprise!

Not so sure as it's only initial data. I really do believe there's a reason that the trading update is being held back and I think that reason will become apparent soon.

Boris is giving his roadmap out of lockdown on 22nd February (Monday) and has already said that Lateral Flow Tests are part of the strategy. Maybe he will announce there is a UK consortium to produce accurate tests which are much easier to use and they will be produced at scale here in the UK.

In the past I've refrained from the "Boris is on at 5pm!" excitement... BUT... the timing of this coincides perfectly and all the pieces line up.

Maybe, just maybe, it's the reason.

Hi Simon,

The Innova test is only CE marked for professional use and it didn't stop those being rolled out. Surescreen also now have a big Government order, and their website also says only CE marked for professional use.

So yes, you are correct - but this isn't stopping the Goverment procuring and distributing them! Of course, ours is anterior nasal and not nasopharyngeal and will therefore be easier and more comfortable to use!

With the nasopharyngeal swabs, for the sample to be correct not only do you have to get to the back of your nasal cavity, you have to swab the nasopharynx. I'm sure that many people get the swabs far enough back but aren't actually swabbing the right area.

Your concern is valid - but when you look at how difficult the competitions tests are to use and how many of those the Gov have been procuring regardless... it seems like a non-problem to me!

...Let's get everybody out of the red, then it truly is blue skies!

Just having a read through my posts from 6th February. Whilst the timing of the RNS was as I expected, it hasn't panned out quite as I predicted in that I thought the S&S data would be contained within the trading update, not by separate RNS. My
apologies.

I'm slightly confused as to why we now have the S&S (although it's only initial data of course) but don't have a trading update which by Avacta's normal timeline is 3 weeks ish overdue. This is either to bolster the share price and get it back to previous levels before releasing the trading update, or it's because there's something Avacta want to put in the trading update which is probable but not absolute. Of course that could be many things, but it's unlikely to be anything bad IMO.

We are expecting the trading update within the next 7 sessions. I still strongly believe, as per my previous post, the trading update will provide us with a lot more clarity.

Things we know:
-Ongoing clinical studies in both the UK and Europe
-CE marking with Mologic by end of March
-Avacta are the reagent owner and will hold the CE mark in due course
-S&S 96.7%/100% (Initial data). Crucially this is from an anterior nasal swab, not a brain tickler
-Test is to be called "AffiDX" (Affimer Diagnostics) - I assume this is pronounced "Affidex"
-Manufacturing by Abingdon/BBI/ Mologic/Global Access Diagnostics

Things we don't know (at least for certain):
-Is the Mologic test and our test actually the same
-Timescale for lay user study
-Manufacturing capacity of the above
-Will Omega be manufacturing too
-Goverment interest/orders
-How much the tests will sell for (Gov/retail)
-Who's making how much out of each test - how is the pie divided up?

Share price opinion...
I'm sure that many people are dissapointed to see the share price pull back to 13.92%. That's still a nice rise but, it's only taken us level to where we were before the vaccine news. By all acccounts, we should now be at an all time high.

The thing to remember is that whilst some of us are safely in profit, others will have been in the red for some time. If people have been having sleepless nights since last year, they probably just wanted to get out or at least de-risk significantly. Holding is easy once you're well into profit, but not so easy when you've been burnt or you are only just breaking even!

There will be lots of holders just wanting to get out, so there will be selling all the way up to 210ish (although really, anybody who bought at those levels should have averaged down) . At that point, everybody will be in profit, comfortable, and the majority of us probably won't be willing to sell for anything less than the 310 broker target which is, IMO, quite conservative! To be fair, their bull case is about 800p if I remember correctly.

IMO within 7 sessions we will have the trading update which will give us a lot more detail. I expect to see a steady rise, maybe a few 5% days,

Lets get everybody out of the

As PL75 said, Surescreen is a brain tickler swab and not user friendly. These were not permitted in the previous tender. The Government does not want these types of tests so they are just filling the gap for now IMO.

Surescreen is ultimately not a competitor. Our only known competition was Mologic... but we now know we are working with them anyway...

There may be some other A.N. tests appear in time... But as it stands... as far I'm aware the world market is there for the taking.

Just realised I used a misleading quote at the bottom of my post - my apologies. Hadn't had my morning coffee!

Here's a link:
shorturl.at/pCINX

The video on how to use it is worth a look too.

Let's also remember that the Surescreen test is nasopharyngeal, therefore much more difficult to take the swab correctly and also highly unpleasant too! Not good for regular mass screening. You're not gonna get the general public doing that every morning whilst they're eating their cornflakes.

Regardless of quoted S&S, this will lead to false negatives where people have not put the swab in far enough, or have failed to swab the nasopharynx and have instead swabbed the surrounding tissue.

It takes medical training to do these swabs correctly, so whilst it's become normal recently - letting the public try and do this type of swab to themselves is fairly ridiculous!

The previous tender did not permit these type of tests, it stated saliva or anterior nasal only. I think we can therefore safely assume that nobody was in a position to tender with a test using one of the required sample methods.

These Surescreen tests are therefore not what the government wanted, and we can also therefore believe with some degree of certainty the government will stop procuring these and change to our anterior nasal test as soon as it is available.

"The tests either use a swab sample from either the nose or throat (nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal sample) or a saliva sample. Whichever test is used, the sample is introduced into the test cassette by suspension in a buffer solution."

Trading View is probably the most popular, but I just do it within IG markets. Most brokers offer all the same tools and indicators. I would start by learning the following:

Channels
Support and resistance
Triangle patterns (Ascending triangle is normally highly reliable IME)
Simple moving average
Stochastics
Fibonacci retracement (Avacta made a Fib retracement in the first crash of last year and it was possible to see the likely re-entry point well before it got there)

Ignore charts to your own detriment.

It's ridiculous in many ways to follow charts. Yes MD85... it seems insane to look at what was going on in 2006. It really has no bearing in many ways. BUT it's what traders will use as reference. Charts are largely h*rse sh*t, but because enough people follow the patterns and strategy it, in my opinion, works because it's a self fulfilling prophecy.

All you need to move a price is a lot of people buying or selling at the same time. Whether that's on chart technicals or fundamentals is irrevelant.

There's been so many occasions on the board whether people have been shout "leak!! leak"... "RNS tomorrow!!"... etc

But if you understand the charts, you can see it's just traders moving in because of a technical signal.

Whether you choose to trade or not, learning this stuff is very wise. It will help you time your buys and sells correctly. If you've ever bought a share with strong fundamentals and watched yourself drop away into the red for no reason... it's because you timed it wrong. Understanding charts will help you to avoid this to a good extent.