Charles Jillings, CEO of Utilico, energized by strong economic momentum across Latin America. Watch the video here.
Funny how the bipolar mrindia 'sold' just before we flew past 3p having held for so long and now gone quiet.
Guess he's on to the next share to pretend to be a worried investor in
Don't think the move to clinical will be the catalyst people think it will. I think it will rise, but investors will always have one eye on funding
Avacta SP is lower now than before a single patient was enrolled on trial, and still dropping, and they're about to close phase 1a which has gone better than envisaged and move to phase 2, and just 2-3 years from commercialisation. Granted their starting point was a lot higher, but then they're creating a whole platform and managed something no other pharma has.
Jupiter shorted Avacta back in 2022 - an anti cancer company during its preclinical stages and at its most vulnerable- utterly abhorrent. I hope these get f|_|ucking destroyed.
Thing that caught my eye is that he's been operating as a consultant for last 13 years - presumably making a lot of money working with a lot of varied clients all on his own terms and in his own time. Not many people towards the end of their careers move from the comfort of LTD operated consultancy back to permie with a boss and shareholders to answer to, even with ir35 being a threat, unless they're offered an opportunity impossible to turn down.
Which begs the questions what has he seen within Avacta thats made him make the switch. I presume he would have asked what deals are currently in the pipeline, who the prospective partners are and marketable value as well as the data so far during interview process. He could have offered to take the role on a consultancy basis, and probably for more money, negotiate a few contracts and then get back down to the pub for a working lunch, but looks like he's in it for the long haul. Is he looking to make a name for himself negotiating the biggest UK pharma deal ever made?
Ramper rockets are go!
right, i've had a few beers now and am now on the anger stage of grief. probably the 3rd worst day as an avacta holder, after covid vaccine day and withdrawal of lft. but why?
avacta have made great progress, yet we're not even 10p higher than a year ago when we didnt even know precision worked. today was crap. i think the 3 main reasons are:
dodging of any questions about financing, licencing and agreements. the initial rns back in 2021 stated about ava6k " has already generated significant interest". so either this commercial interest is at a crucial stage and he can't disclose anything, or he was full of **** and has currently not managed to negotiate anything substantial, or to a stage where things can be progressed.
in qa referring to chemo therapy as "old drugs" and inferring that they're about to be replaced even though the new cytoxic drugs are at least a decade away from being used in patients. way to **** on your pathfinder drug before its even reached the market.
in vox interview inferring that we'll need a phase 3, and a partnership to achieve this. the one thing pushing this platform was the lack of need for a phase 3. if attaching a known chemo drug to a new delivery system will now require p3, this means any potential suitor will think its going to be 8-10 years before i see an roi why would i try and attach it to existing chemo drugs, might as well develop a brand new compound. al has just said chemo is pointless as new cytoxic drugs might be available shortly after which are far more potent, so why bother linking it to a form of carboplatin or cysplatin?
the common denominator is al. maybe he should let someone with commercial nous handle interviews and investor presentations and stick to the science. who knows, maybe thats partly the reason why the lft failed (as well as being crap)
not quite bottom drawer for me, but not expecting anything material now until p2 is underway later next year.
My Qs so far
Given that precision is looking to be the most important development in oncology since the first chemotherapies themselves were discovered, how will Avacta ensure that licencing and partnership agreements reflect the true value of the platform?
Following on from above, and with respect to NDAs, has there been much serious commercial interest in either progressing our existing pipeline in either as a partnership or a licence agreement, or ideally for a third party to use their chemo drugs using Avacta precision platform? If not, what advancements would major pharma players want to see, eg completion of phase 2, demonstration of delivery with other off the shelf chemo agents, greater exclusivity offered for licencing, more favourable commercial terms etc
I take it this means approval or other major news isn't imminent otherwise he'd have waited a month and raised a heck of a lot more at 3-4p.
Makes Art from COPL look like a competent businessman. Avacta showed how to raise capital properly, would have been a better model to use.
managed to get matched at 1.28 today, first time i've bought more in a while. feel like i've mugged someone. can i see them beating 5% fixed rate savers over 3 years? i reckon so.
my worst case is as follows:
ava6k found not to improve patient survival rates over regular dox, but still becomes standard care due to lower toxicity and kinder to patients. also only approved for sts, no one interested in using it for breast cancer, and its limited to 3 courses at £2000 a pop, and assume we have a p1ss poor 30-400% margin. affimer platform fails, and 3996 is stuck in development and all but abandoned, no one wants a licence, so avacta relying on ava6k sales alone. we'll imagine nhs and rest of world declines approval, so from 2026/2027 the only market is the us. in us there are 13400 new sts patients each year, so let's say each of these gets 3 courses at £2k a go. thats £6000 for each patient. that's £80m in revenue, probably £20-30m profit, every year for 10 years. how much are companies with £30m annual profit worth? assume a pe ratio of 15, that's £450m mcap. so if everything goes utterly **** up, im still expecting the sp to be +23% from now. even fund managers would be happy with a 23% rise in 3 years. realistically i think we'll do a bit better than that.
Not quite true, dhub
CBR
"This interest is gratifying and, given our limited resources and the need to focus on our lead product HEMO-CAR-T, we have made considerable progress and plan to devote further internal resources to this project as soon as HEMO-CAR-T enters clinical trials."
CDX:
"This remains a potentially valuable part of our portfolio and we will also work to take this forward once our lead product has moved into the clinic."
No news will happen on other platforms until we're in clinical trials. The 'OK' to start might happen this year but the actual process won't happen until probably Feb imo
Not about being thick. At agm Al said the current mcap made it difficult to attract investment as they could potentially get a greater return on something 1/10th ours. Once news is out that ava6k and therefore precision as a whole safe and shows signs of efficiency, peer reviewed, then there will be a scramble to get in. These are people who have heard "it's a cure for cancer, honest gov" probably hundreds of times over the last few decades. Personally, I don't think these investment and venture capital type firms will have chance a get to look in before a major pharma who understands the data better than any of them either take on a licence deal propelling SP or buy lock stock the whole fackin lot.
Their loss, our gain I suppose.
I'd like to see GSK put in a £15bn bid for Avacta and become the gold standard in oncology for breast cancer, soft tissue sarcoma, liver and and pancreatic cancer. Would be nice to keep a British pharma giant instead of being sold off on the cheap
Well in that case they should call the generic name uselessandmuchcrapperubicin, and choose whatever fancy brand name they like. That way when it goes out of patent, the hospital will ask the lead consultants "Do you want to order that expensive avadox again, the computer says the generic alternative is uselessandmuchcrapperubicin?"