Member Info for Monkshood

An excerpt from an article in the Times-
'He’s picked his moment, too. The deal’s at a 47 per cent premium. But, as Stifel analysts noted, Terminix’s “share price is down 30 per cent since July”, while Rentokil’s is up from around 500p. Pro-forma free cash flow tots up to £458 million. And, after £113 million of synergies, the take-out multiple is 13.9 times Terminix’s forecast 2021 ebitda: a valuation about half Rentokil’s own.'

Not sure it was win -win for those who bought at 660p this morning (had they not read the rns?).
RTO have a good track record of acquisitions but this will take up quite a bit of time and spare cash over the next year.
I wonder if we will now also see the sale of French workwear soon?

It's a huge acquisition but at quite a high premium . It will be interesting to see what happens with the price over the next week.

I have done the same for 75% of my holdings. I am sure Dunelm will do OK but it is hard to see that there will not be a more general sell off in the near future which will drag it down with everything else.
I still have a small holding here and will rebuild once things become clearer.

As Omicron looks like being the predominant variant by the end of the month I find it hard to believe that they will get any authorisations until they have demonstrated comparable performance with Omicron to that seen with Delta.

Todays HMG's Technical Briefing-
'initial laboratory validation of lateral flow devices in use by NHS Test and Trace has
determined similar sensitivity to detect Omicron compared to Delta. Data will be
shared in the next technical briefing'

We need to see Avacta put out a similar statement for their LFD's.

Note - BBC are reporting 110 cases for Scotland - but these are 'confirmed' cases -1095 is the number of confirmed plus potential cases ( PCR tests showing S dropouts)..
If it is a similar ratio in the rest of the UK then we are > 10k cases already.

What I don't understand is if you are holding for the long term, have conviction in your belief and do not intend to trade, why keep ramping it?
Surely you are better off keeping quiet so that you can accumulate more at a lower price.

The standards are now available to purchase, I thought that the issue would be getting real samples to back up any work using standards but with already over 1k cases just in Scotland, this should not be a problem.
Let's hope they can be as quick with their confirmatory testing as this variant is at spreading.

This is not the only mutation. I have been following this in the databases and was surprised that there had been no mention of it.
There are some that lack the deletion which is responsible for the S dropout, but there are others that lacks some of the vaccine escape mutations. I would be interested to know how you develop a new vaccine by March if it is not clear yet what sub lineage will be the 'winner' . Do they go for the one with the most mutations and hope that the antibodies from our current vaccines will help with the less mutagenized version?

I took yesterdays rises to move a lot of holdings to cash. When Delta came along in India last April I looked at the biology realised it would not overcome the vaccine and so dismissed the increased transmissibility. Most of my recovery stacks I held have since, at best, tread water (and many have gone down). With Omicron the transmissibility looks to be even higher and the virus will, in part, overcome the vaccines.
However it plays out in terms of hospitalisation I think having really high headline cases will spook the markets come early next year.
Overall I have done OK this year so at the worst I lose out on some gains. I still have a reduced holding here and add again when things are clearer as it is a good long term investment.

Earlier in the year the Adderley's reduced their holdings to enable them to diversify their portfolio (reasonable enough).
I wonder if they will use the buyback to further reduce their holdings? It would seem like a good opportunity and may explain why Dunelm purchasing circa 40k of its own shares a day is having little impact on the share price.

No surprise, but I am sure you will all be delighted that Porton will be the lead on this.....
'Laboratory assessment of lateral flow device performance (UKHSA Porton).'

The report is worth a read for the broader situation.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1038404/Technical_Briefing_30.pdf

You are going back to March/April last year when they first produced the Affimers. I am not sure how much was known at that point, there was clearly not enough time to provide information about conserved sites although they may have been able to compare it to Sars Cov. If I recall correctly the main focus at the time was specificity, in that it did not cross react with other coronaviruses.
You can argue either way re comparison to antibodies, a larger binding area may also reduce the impact of a change.
We will have to wait until they tell us something but with the standards becoming available and real samples starting to look obtainable we should know soon.

This refers to the S protein - not the N protein that the majority of the test are based on. The company have not put out anything about the changes in that yet (although there are less) . Note GSKs sotrovimab looks like it may still work so hopefully if the Affimers bind to the same site then all would be well.

The data is starting to come thorough on Omicron. It would nice to see Avacta update on the performance of their tests with this variant before the New Year.
From SinoBiological-
After screening a panel of previously established spike antibodies, we identified one (mouse) mAb , clone 40592-MM117, strongly reactive with the Omicron Spike protein. There is another antibody that demonstrates moderate reactivity against the Omicron variant. All other tested clones, including several broad-spectrum ACE2-competing neutralizing antibodies, don’t bind with the mutant at all.
It’s noteworthy that clone 40592-MM117 has non-ACE2 competing neutralizing activity against both the original strain and the Delta variant. Interestingly, the other mAb tested reactive to Omicron also has non-ACE2 binding neutralizing activity against previous strains. Whether the same clones can also neutralize the Omicron variant is currently being tested.

ps - I was not serious about using the whole spike as a vaccine (it may even make you more susceptible!).

If you fancy a technical read about vaccines and the resilience of different treatments (and an interesting approach to vaccines) look up RadVaC - Their press release covers the main points re-Omicron but their white paper is a great source for a deeper understanding of the background biology.

I have been informed that standards of the spike protein produced in HEK293 cells (so glycosylate) for Omicron will be available from the 11 th December. Hopefully Avacta will be purchased some to test their LFT's.
At just £360 for 100ug it will also be just in time for making DIY Omicron vaccines to give your loved ones as Christmas presents.

All looks OK. Barclays have slightly upped their target to 516.
I am annoyed that they have only made their results presentation open to sell side analysts. A lot more companies have now moved to a more open presentation format making these also available to retail investors, but some including Redde still seem to be opposed to this. The Q&A's are often more informative than the presentation itself .

It is a shame that Omicron came along otherwise it would have been well over 300 even with the issues with delta elsewhere.

Gotmiester - I think that they will initially be using the S dropout from PCR as a measure of Omicron. This is not fool proof as it is not the only variant with the 69-70 deletion but I assume samples seen with this profile will then be submitted for sequencing or reamplifying using Omicron targeted primers.