Member Info for Monkshood

The webcast confirmed that all is going well, good clarity of predicted revenues going forward. They have picked up quite a few more big name clients- BMW, Daimler, Levono, LMVH China were mentioned. Expecting to role out up to three new products this year.
There is clearly a focus on improving margins and driving cross selling using the new management (regional) structure.
The price was taken down on a very limited number of sells and looks to be recovering. I still view this as a good longer term bet.
Just having the number of quality clients that they have signed up puts them in a strong position as they develop their new products.

Well, it was what had been flagged and at first look seems to agree with to Edison's figures, so not sure why the drop. Perhaps some were expecting a greater recovery?
Looks to be on track - will be interesting to see what they say in the results webcast.

The closure of more John Lewis shops will play into Dunelm's hands, it should help them to increase market share.

There were some contingent liabilities at Bibiani. They linked into whether the mining was started by 2019. It is on page 119 of the recently released annual report. I profess to having never fully understood it ! They had a high court appeal around now (see below). It may be to do with this issue.
'The appeal proceedings involving Riasand have been settled on the basis of a payment to Riasand. Orders giving effect to the settlement (including vacating the stayed winding up order) are expected to be made at a hearing in the Ghanaian High Court within one month.'
The problem is if they cannot sell Bibiani they have to carry $100m more debit and will have no 'spare' cash to go underground at Tabakoroni . They then would need a placing to fund this next stage.
It would be a shame as they looked to be starting to turn a corner.
Tempting as it is, I am going to sit on my hands....

They have plagiarised my write ups ! So they have (part) launched Lets explore in the US.
A comment on cash would have been nice but I guess post US spring break their coffers should be further replenished so probably why they are keeping quite until the end of April.

Fortunately their main markets are in places which should be some of the earliest to open.
From Bloomberg -' Traffic at U.S. retail and recreation venues in the past week is just about 10% below the pre-pandemic baseline'. Australia should have been OK and we will start to open up here very soon.
18/23 (more now?) of their sites US were open in Feb. The US spring break is coming up, Clearwater is open, 22 seats (Immo get $5 per person for this), Nevada now allows 50% capacity, hopefully full capacity in 5 weeks (so would be back to 36 seats there then).
With Lets explore and Uvisan seemingly ticking over, hopefully their 1.9M in cash will keep them going whilst the revenues start to pick up.
This is a business that should bounce back really quickly, with now also having the benefit of the extra income streams from Lets explore and Uvisan.

The topic of variants (with the potential impact on binding of the Affimers used in the LFT) has frequently been discussed here and has been covered, in part, by the companies presentations.
I found the linked article one of the clearest explanations of the different variants of concern that are circulating . In particular Fig2 should be a useful reference when the topic of which amino acid changes in the variants, that could potentially affect Affimer binding, are discussed.
We know that binding is unaffected by D614G and the changes in the Kent B.1.1.7 variant (key would be N501Y). The effect of E484K is still unknown.
As an aside, it is interesting that in the scope of this article they only identified one variant with both N501Y and E484K, this has also arisen in the UK but again (at least so far) has not become prevalent. This could mean that there is a fitness cost to having both mutations which would be good.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7924303/

I did actually realise it was the degree sign that was wrong, I will make no further attempts at humour and go back to being a boring scientist.....For anyone following the link and wonders what it was about they have corrected the mistake now.

From- Usage of lateral flow devices for asymptomatic staff testing at vaccination sites, Version 1, 18 March 2021

Lateral flow device – storage and box contents
'Space will need to be made available for storage of the devices at between 40C and 300C.
The testing kits will arrive in boxes.....'

Well that explains the delay - they have to be able to stand 300C!

A good summary Poirot. I was (nicely) surprised by how much future value was highlighted by this interview. Even just the value of the upfront payments and royalties with LG which could (potentially) accrue was far larger than I expected.

As Ndn71 says the whole point about using Affimers is that they are not Antibodies with the difficulties that arise from producing these. It took them about 4 weeks to generate the original S1 Affimers (although not sure what they have been doing for the next 48 weeks...).

'useless echo chamber' it is a fair point, but I always sceptical of people who either have little or no posting history or just turn up to talk down a share (or cross ramp another share). Most on this BB have a good idea who are the long term holders, if one of these voiced a reasonable concern then I would take note.
Generally, unlike some, this has been a constructive board. We did have one period where there was a certain individual was constantly trying to talk the share down, it was needless, not constructive and became disruptive.
I have never posted on a board where I do not hold shares and struggle to reason why anyone who was not invested would spend their time doing so.

I was very impressed with the presentation and answers in Q&A - topped up. Lots of opportunities around the world with bids in both new and existing territories.
Going forward they are also starting to look at third parties owning the buses which would reduce capex and deleverage the business.

'I cannot see a clear 30pct upside from where we are now and you can in a lot of stocks. There probably is 30pct upside with time, but other stocks have this without a long wait timeframe'
Then one wonders why you are wasting you time posting here?

They have done better than II was expecting especially in the last quarter. The new CEO has clearly pushed to get all of the bad news out on this set of accounts with write offs of various historic issues.
Recovery should be fairly quick (note their suggested time frame is much shorter than for the airlines). With the new business wins and the measures taken over the past year, going forwarded it will be more profitable than prior to the pandemic.
Unlike you I can see a 30% upside (to around 400) over the next year.

CFO purchasing 40K shares at 299p is a very bullish statement (especially as he also picked up over 100k on the LTIP a couple of days ago).

From BBC-
'Universities can offer more face-to-face teaching for students after the Easter break, the Welsh Government has said.
Education Minister Kirsty Williams told a press conference that students could resume a mix of campus and learning from home from 12 April.'

$1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill - just a reminder as to how this could benefit nex-
From the Whitehouse-

‘Protect the future of public transit. Safe and dependable public transit systems are critical for a robust and equitable economy recovery. The president is calling for $20 billion in relief for the hardest hit public transit agencies. This relief will keep agencies from laying off transit workers and cutting the routes that essential workers rely on every day while making these transit systems more resilient and ensuring that communities of color maintain the access to opportunity that public transportation provides'

'Provide $130 billion to help schools to safely reopen. Schools need flexible resources to safely reopen …… increase transportation capacity to facilitate social distancing on the bus’

There is a article on Innova in todays Times -
'The UK has agreed to buy at least £2.8 billion of Innova’s rapid lateral flow test kits, which give a result within 30 minutes. Under the Operation Moonshot strategy, the government plans to use targeted mass testing in the public sector to monitor infection rates and stop asymptomatic spread.
Elliott, who is scaling up production to 50 million tests a day, said about half of Innova’s customers were companies that want to protect employees in the workplace.'
Whilst there is still time for Avacta to cash in on this, they have lost a large chuck of revenue by being slow to get their tests out (for whatever the reasons may be). When they announced in early April last year that they were collaborating with Cytiva to make LFT's , I did not think that they we would still be waiting for its release almost a year later.

They have extended the discount period for a further 3 weeks but the total predicted cost of this discount (including the three extra weeks) has now reduced from the previously expected £15 to £10M.
This is due to more students returning. It fits with what I have been seeing from students that I know how have nearly all now returned. I can see the sp starting to pick up, as this shows the risk of further extended vacancies is decreasing.

No surprises. Plenty of M&A to keep the growth going. Also re- building in areas of Europe they previously had to exit hygiene. I think this quarter will be flat at best (lockdowns in Europe, freeze in the US) but it should pick up after this. They commented how quickly Australia/NZ have bounced back to normal levels.
Did you note, going forward, the fx headwind of £15-20 m (similar to 2018 predictions when sterling was up )?, OK fair enough, but then for last year ' Adverse foreign exchange translation and other items of £58.4m are primarily due to the weakening impact of sterling against the euro and dollar, as well as the impact of the closure of an instrument designed to reduce US interest rates on our US dollar debt'
So weak £, negative impact, strong £ negative impact- what exactly is the 'goldilocks' value of £ for RTO??