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James Wakefield had to run the recruitment exercise for the new CEO, that’s how boards work. Anything else would break all the BOD’s governance. I agree it’s all a bit strange, but we wouldn’t have even seen some of it if the AGM hadn’t been pushed back, so an odd situation was amplified. DA couldn’t join the AGM as he wasn’t CEO at that point. Also lots of people have commented on JW’s nervousness and poor delivery, which I agree with. Though he had to read what was written (agreed to be said) about DA, so it could be translated into French straightaway. This doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know him and wasn’t involved in recruitment. Was he more nervous because he had pushed GM out? Who knows, but that would explain why he looked so nervous and limited what he said about DA to what’s on DA’s Nova profile. IMO this BOD isn’t capable of orchestrating a push down of the SP.
We’ve got to give DA a chance, especially if GM was pushed. How much would GM have helped before DA officially started? He will be getting up to speed, looking at this year’s rev and profit, seeing if he can also be as bullish as JM about the £100m ex DHSC rev for 2021, understanding the DHSC issue in more detail, the sales pipeline, the new product innovations being developed, assessing the people, meeting customers and then starting to think about whether he agrees with the current strategy and post Covid activity and what needs to be changed. This first period for any CEO/leader is to listen, learn, understand (whilst making sure the short term targets are hit) and then act
Yeah thanks Woody, nothing to do with October now having the highest daily rate of PCR tests this year, Covid positive tests hitting 50k again or the MCAP being the same as Total Assets?
@Troublesome it certainly is causing havoc in schools. My kids’ after school club insisted on them both having a negative PCR before they were allowed back last week. School then closed their classes this week, now back to home schooling. They have now written tonight, in conjunction with the local public health body, to say that they both need a negative PCR test before they’ll be allowed back into school after half term. None of them will accept a LTF. Very different to U.K. Gov on travel
@InvestorSteve
I don’t really understand why there is such a delay for home self test v the professional test already having been approved. A number of U.K. LFT manufacturers are also facing a delay, so not just a Novacyt issue. Having watched a nurse go through the process of testing me abroad, it was no different to doing it myself. As long as you follow the instructions properly, which I appreciate some won’t, I really don’t understand the difference. I appreciate the volume of approvals can create pressure for the approval body, but I can’t believe that they couldn’t haven’t accelerated this process if they had wanted to. They managed to get the PCR tests validated recently. The LFT margin is going to be tight given the price points of the competition from the Far East, who already provide some of the LFTs that you can buy for self certification to fly home from abroad, so I don’t think that this is going to be a material profit stream for us. The announced delay was just a reason to bash the SP, despite £100m rev for the year excluding DHSC and any material sales from home use LFTs, being confirmed again and again.
The antibody test is more interesting, but looking at the daily numbers from the Gov website there are fewer than 5k a day tests over the past week, so what will the demand be?
Tumbleweed moment…..
@Wilson yes that was the gist, we’ll get the recording soon, but I wrote down that the “Unicef donation was Genesig and it wasn’t the unused inventory from the dispute”
@BigYellowPig agree don’t know why, but you’d think GM could have mentioned it earlier
On the AGM/EGM today GM confirmed that it wasn’t Genesig that was left over inventory, when asked a question about donating 200k tests to UNICEF.
On the Investor Call on 18/08 (link below) GM confirmed that the Promate (supplied under the new £4.7m award under the new framework) was being supplied and used by the Q16/Q32s that were deployed under the second contract.
https://www.investormeetcompany.com/investor/meeting/investor-meeting-1
@Wilson the Genesig admission was massive for me, but hasn’t really been discussed much today. It was the only real ‘new news’. It was a logical theory that we gave UNICEF a bunch of tests that were ordered by someone else, but not used and returned or were produced for a contract that didn’t happen, but that theory was disproved today. Along with GM’s previous comment on the investor presentation that the NHS/DHSC were using Qs under the disputed contract for the Promate under new NHS framework contract, it’s starting to come together…
Interesting that James referenced dual listing on AIM and NASDAQ when talking about DA. Am I reading too much into that? When GM answered earlier on he said “no plans to change listing as of today”…
They can’t give Sept cash position in the AGM without it being in an RNS first
10mins as it does seem to take longer in the French translation!
They all look nervous tbh
No DA in the room though
It says AGM/EGM on the screen + James’s intro so must have got the votes
James Wakefield just said 13:05 start
Noticed that the speakers are still listed as
James Wakefield
Graham Mullis
James McCarthy
And no David Allmond mentioned. Hope he does join as it will be good to hear from him, though we have to remember it’s his first day and he has to get comfortable with the numbers for this year, where we are on a range of issues (DHSC dispute, FDA approval, LFT personal use approval, new products etc.) and then future strategy.
The Business Update on the Agenda, below will be interesting, though with no Q3 Update RNS today they can’t disclose anything more, IMO, than that they stand by the full year £100m ex DHSC revenue (if that’s still the case, which I hope and can’t see any other signs that it won’t). Hope we get some additional insight though. Also interesting to see which resolutions pass seeing as it looks like the quorum target was hit late on Thursday.
Quorum and Notice of Meeting
Welcome and Introduction
Business Update
Resolutions
Close of Meeting
Yellow Piggie if your advice was so great, why didn’t you take it yourself?
Thanks @Poidster
Poidster any view on how long the £4.7m Promate under the new contract will last?
I hope they got their dirty laundry out when they (accounting wise) wrote off/down the income, the inventory and the costs from the disputed DHSC contract. That was the time to get it all out and hopefully there’s no more to come now, just upside. They also announced the delay on the LFTs, but I think that was just bonus revenue for 2021 and they’ve reiterated that they’re still forecasting £100m ex.DHSC, so the delay shouldn't affect forecast for this year. We do need to generally sell more products through Microgen in 2022.