Member Info for HarChris

So on the 22nd July the rns laid out the details of the care home trial. The study was to investigate whether or not daily testing reduced the infection rate, morbidity and mortality in the high risk care home population.

Now in the most recent rns we were told that there was encouraging interim data and that there was confirmation that the NPT stands up to laboratory testing in regards to accuracy. It also found that the mid-nose swabs were as effective as the more invasive nasopharangeal swabs.

So does anyone have any more information or a better understanding of what the next steps are likely to be? It took almost four months to get this interim data, are we looking at another four months before getting the green light?!

This is posted as a joke, right?

Shaun, not only would it almost certainly propel us towards the broker forecasts, we would almost certainly see a significant upgrade to the broker targets. Numis has already stated that triggering P2 of the DHSC contract alone would lead to that.

This is very good news for novacyt. Moonshot shifted the emphasis away from novacyt's gold standard pcr testing to on-the-spot rapid testing. Not only this but the sort of outlay that was being discussed was astronomical and seemed to me at least, to be pretty reckless.

Let's say Moonshot is to be scrapped. That frees up considerable funds to direct towards care homes/schools, don't cha think? The government could roll out NPT to all care homes and many schools for a mere fraction of what they were intending to spend on Moonshot.

It would also make many of us here rather rich!

Of course this isn't opening at 850 unless there is a morning rns but today's price action was very positive. Who knows what tomorrow will bring but there's reasons to be cheerful.

Schools in England are suffering increased disruption due to the pandemic, with latest official figures showing that around 600,000 pupils were at home last week for Covid-related reasons and almost two-thirds of secondary schools were affected.

Figures published by the Department for Education revealed school attendance fell from 89.3% to 86.5% in the space of a week. The proportion of primary schools affected, reporting one or more pupils in self-isolation, doubled from 11% to 22%.

Secondary schools continued to be worse affected, with 64% sending one or more pupils home to self-isolate as of last Thursday, up from 38% the week before. More schools are also having to send larger groups of 30 or more children, up from 8/9% to 18/20% over the same seven-day period.

The vast majority of pupils missing school are away not because they are ill with Covid or suspected Covid, but because they are having to self-isolate because of a Covid risk.

Last week’s figures were more promising, showing reduced levels of Covid-related disruption, but they followed the half-term break for schools in England. Teaching unions expressed alarm at the latest increases and said the current situation was not sustainable.

Something needs to be done re schools.

Infor, none of us here are 100% sure about this investment but we are very confident. Things are all pointing towards a couple of big contracts that will see the share price lightyears away from where it is now. If they land as many of us are expecting, the Astra Zeneca news will not make much difference. Of course if the astra zeneca news lands first this might dip back towards £7 but we have done our research and put the time in and don't plan to mess around trying to second guess that interim readout.

If the more than 5 fold increase is from 300 to 1500 (not 150 to 750 as discussed earlier) then it's highly likely that it is for both Phase 2 and care homes and whatever else we aren't yet aware of yet - PD's twitter did mention schools yesterday...

Prop, if you read my post you'll actually notice that it didn't shift like it should have following such an amazing rns. It got there eventually but took from 28th Sept to the 9th Oct to go from 467 to 880 and then another two and a half weeks to get go above £11.

This time however I think it will move much, much quicker as we have the broker target of £13.65/£14.65 to go at which wouldn't include the new contract. If the care home contract lands whilst we're still down around the £9 mark I could see a 100% gain in two days.

Soder, it's interesting looking at what happened last time to plan what to do next. On the 29th September the new DHSC contract landed. Share price closed at 467 on the 28th and closed at 524 on the 29th. At the time it seemed astonishing to me that it only rose 12% off the back of the most amazing rns you could ever ask for.

Then day after day it rose, closing at 549 on the 30th, 580 by the 2nd, 652 by the 5th and then 880 by the 9th. I'm wondering if there are investors waiting on the sideline ready to jump in as soon as it lands...

Take your mind back to a few months ago... I distinctly remember the chatter around a new large nhs contract growing ever louder as the research brought up clue after clue that pointed in that direction - then all of a sudden the news landed.

We're in exactly the same position with care homes right now...

Hi Nixynoo, thanks I'll check it out. The point I was trying to make is this company can easily thrive even if the pfizer/moderna vaccine proves as effective as the companies have claimed recently. IF they turn out to be wildly overblown and testing is needed at this capacity long term, then ncyt will be worth many billions even before reinvesting and diversifying.

Imo all a vaccine does it lower the top end potential for novacyt. Hypothetically speaking, if there was no vaccine in three years time novacyt could be generating billions year in year out from covid tests and support services, making this company worth tens of billions of pounds even without reinvestment. That isn't likely to be the case.

But at £530m mcap this is hardly going to take much of a hit...

Oh, by not as striking I mean unlikely to see 90% effectiveness... I'm not going to pretend to understand the science. All I know is that the 90% effectiveness took everyone by surprise including those scientists involved in the process. Why? Because experts were expecting vaccines, especially the first ones rolled out, to be closer to 50% effective. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are a new type of vaccine called an mRNA vaccine and I believe are being tested for the first ever time...

Novacyt's ability to spot an opportunity or issue and get on top of it immediately is a real selling point. This speed got them to where they are now and should give investors confidence that if this virus mutates significantly this will pose no problems for them.

Infor, there is no such thing as checkmate here. This is a company close to landing deals that could eclipse its current mcap in one go. If what you mean is it might give covid stocks a little shake, then yeah I'd agree - certainly the likes of GDR and avacta could be hit hard. But there is only so low novacyt can really go as it's propped up by a gigantic cash pile.

I certainly wouldn't be trying to time that announcement - it might not be as striking anyway as the MRna vaccines and by then we might have already received good news on other fronts...

It reminds us that we'll need to test for covid well into the future. Fast forward a year, even if deaths are vastly reduced thanks to a vaccine, those still catching the virus will need to know that they've had it so as to be able to deal with the potential long term consequences. Winterplex in particular will still be an extremely important test.

Shaun, there's the accountant in you. I wondered myself previously if it was five times 150 or five times 300. The reason I went with the latter is because the RNS makes it sound like since acquiring IT-IS they have scaled up five fold whereas the ramping up of production undertaken by IT-IS would have been earlier in the year.

In truth though there's no way of us knowing, unless someone perhaps asked them?!

Hi Shaun, your figures look good. Also worth noting that production has increased MORE than five fold. Not necessary to include in your figures but we could well be looking at say 1650 a month which makes a difference.

I think the vaccine news could lead to a massive splurge by the government over this winter period. If they take the view that the pandemic will be somewhat under control by the winter, it frees them up to go big at protecting care homes and schools over the next 6 months... We could be looking at the sort of figures that are hard to get ones head around!

Ignore it.