Member Info for HarChris

It's not true Pondfrog/try2buylow, everyone is entitled to an opinion here and everyone is able to offer a rebuttal if they don't agree with it. Negative comments aren't expunged from the bb, pessimists aren't banned. Just as you are able to respond to all the positivity with negativity others are free to question and challenge yours.

Unsurprisingly there are more bullish folk on here than bearish, as you would expect on a bb like this full of shareholders...

As for the half year trading update the one thing I am eager to see is the current cash pile as of 30th June 2021. We more or less know what H1 revenue is but the cash at bank is a little foggier so some clarity on that would be useful for us shareholders.

There is no reason to suggest they can't figure out what to do with the cash, they will be actively looking at acquisition targets at the right price. As I was saying earlier the future testing landscape is still very much uncertain but the next few months and into the winter will be telling and informative... it therefore makes sense to sit on the cash for now unless the right opportunity presents itself.

I would be extremely surprised if in six months from now a substantial amount of our cash hasn't been spent on M&A.

Bluelight, I've got a question for you as I don't really know how T/Os work... if you think an offer would be in the £14-£16 region surely any such potential buyer would be building a substantial holding down at this level, attempting to buy up as much possible as clandestinely and carefully as possible without spiking the share price too much?

My average is around £3.50 now so of course I'm not going to feel the same way as those with much higher averages.

This same debate went on regularly on the SNG board last year - I said I'd probably accept a takeover offer of £5 when the share price was £2 and I got laughed off the board with the average poster claiming they wouldn't even consider it below £10-£12. A year later and the share price is £1.50 and I'm quite confident many of those same people would be happy with a fiver now.

I have built up a large enough holding here that £6 would be bordering on life changing for me, as would the share price collapsing in on itself (to the negative). I probably wouldn't accept the offer but I would considerably reduce my holding following the inevitable spike in the share price. Not because I don't believe in this company but because I do believe a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.

Butchers, they increased revenue from £16.6m to £18.3m and saw post tax loss rise from £2.43m to £12.2m. I mean, I remember last year around March many discussions on which were the better investment, novacyt or yourgene... I think we now know the answer to that. - their SP is actually quite a bit lower than it was pre pandemic and you can see why.

Seeing results like this is a constant reminder of how unrealistically high some of our expectations were last year - I think my hope was for £400m revenue for 2020 whilst others predicted revenues all the way up to £1b! When you look around the vast majority of companies failed to take advantage of the 'covid opportunity' with yourgene being a prime example but it would be easy to name nine or ten others.

Yourgene clinging on to a £95m valuation thanks to a stronger Q1 but the truth is they are a test manufacturer who themselves moved relatively early last year and still managed to finish the year with a stinking loss. Our huge profits and cash pile should be looked at in context, it really is a bigger deal than the market is giving credit for...

What I meant is there is some uncertainty in regards to the testing landscape, ie if we are 'learning to live with the virus' will we stop requiring double vaccinated holidaymakers to take multiple PCR tests upon arriving in the country from other countries? Possibly. What we surely won't drop is PCR testing of symptomatic individuals and the sequencing of positive tests.

The broader point I was making is even IF (and this isn't my opinion) covid testing reduces to just a fraction of what it is currently that is not a terminal risk to this investment, the profit generation over the past eighteen months is transformational no matter what happens in relation to covid testing...

There's uncertainty when it comes to the future of covid testing, there's uncertainty over how long PCR tests will be mandatory for flying etc etc but what is crucial is that novacyt moved first and made the big bucks whilst others continually failed to deliver - whilst other competitors/small diagnostic companies even failed to increase revenues last year we went and made £132m net profit. We only expected covid revenue for about nine to twelve months last year and already it's been eighteen months, the rest now is a bonus.

The management are in an enviable position of sitting on £100m to react to whatever changes occur in the testing landscape, all these others without the working capital simply aren't in a comparable position.

We know a couple of things now in which there is scientific consensus - a) the vaccine is not doing a great job at preventing infection (especially delta) and b) the vaccine prevents severe illness to a high degree . This means that infection rates will remain stubborn and we will not bring down deaths anywhere to close to zero as many frail and elderly individuals will still die even from mild illness (as well an unlucky small minority). As things stand hospitals are not going to be overwhelmed because of the virus and so the current opening will continue as it is.

There are still big question marks and unknowns - for example how long is immunity and protection against severe illness going to last? It's likely vaccines will offer *some* protection for many years to come however already there are signs of the effectiveness against severe disease waning. There is nothing to suggest yet that this is a major risk in the short term and hence no decision has been made on winter boosters but if it turns out that immunity from vaccine begins to wane significantly from about six months after the second jab then that does pose long term challenges.

Great post as ever HillSeeker, very well put.

If you take all the investment case pros and all the investment case cons at this price it becomes so clear that the downside risks are well and truly baked in and the upside potential is currently ignored.

Porky if one were to be very pessimistic/negative it would be fair to say that we don't know yet what sort of revenue we are capable of generating from the bioinformatics/genetic surveillance side of the business. However it's evident that our R&D capabilities are excellent and we are swimming in cash and have spent the past eighteen months reading the global situation and positioning accordingly so there is every reason to expect this to be a lucrative revenue stream in the future...

Bluelight I suppose for the traders this is quite a low risk punt. On the one hand the fundamentals are extremely strong but on the other it's unlikely to rise significantly until the dispute is resolved. So, following a steep fall they can throw money at this and if it does go even lower, well, their money will be left sitting in here until the dispute is resolved whereas if it spikes back up they can take the guaranteed profit and see if the whole thing plays out identically in a week or two's time.

Thanks to enough people thinking the same way it appears to be playing out the same way again and again. As long as this all turns out well in the end though we'll be the main beneficiaries and most traders will miss out on the biggest gains...

And as for the II holdings again I really don't get it. I noticed the other day Lombard Asset Management buying up ever greater numbers of SourceBio's shares, I think they hold something like 25% of that company now - the investment case to me looks pitiful compared with NCYT...

I'm not a trader and don't know much about charts etc but I would imagine another reason why we see a sell off after any rise is because we're in a long protracted downtrend. At some point that will reverse and we'll see sustained rises over a sustained period but for now it is what it is and we have no choice but to wait for things to turn around (or sell at a miserable loss).

There will be many traders jumping in following the bigger falls, like last week when we broke out to the downside. And yes it's not a case of getting bored of making 3-4%, it's a case of news that gives those traders confidence that the brakes are off and the share price can rally i.e many traders will buy in down here and plan to sell at say 315p, if meaningful news lands beforehand they'll hold off selling and let it play out.

Strategic/lucky timing of news is always needed to see big moves in a short space of time.

Kaeren's a good egg that's for sure.

It would be interesting to know just how much PIs on here and twitter hold collectively in order to see what sway we'd have if any T/O offer came in - it's surely going to be a good chunk of the company between us at this stage...

Bought three lots earlier myself which will show up as 1686, 1663 and 1692. Did not plan to build such a large holding again but it's just hard to see how it can go much lower than this!