Member Info for Monkshood

The problem of this BB in the week is that it is now completely swamped by ramping/de-ramping , (and, understandably, general excitement) the other day there was >100 posts. I have given up trying to find the useful posts in amongst the dross when the markets are open.

That's brilliant, I have just waded through several papers to see what they do and this is exactly it, but explained in a far less turgid way....Ni tag pulldowns or columns is what they use. Not sure how this method scales?
I did wonder if they heated the preps. The protein is stable at 100c whereas almost all others will denature, it is the/a method for purifying Taq polymerase (the enzyme used in PCR)- but they do not seem to.
There is no talk of issues with solubility but growing at 25c rather than the optimum for E.coli (37c) is usually to stop the protein going into insoluble inclusion bodies.

I guess IF's purchase started the ball rolling again. I missed the rns until yesterday, I may have topped up with a few more if I had spotted it earlier. I guess about another month before the results, I think that they could be quite good.

Can I claim first mention of this …..
From 7.48am on the 4th -

Absolutely, also 'its newly developed saliva-based rapid test for the COVID-19 antigen, subject to regulatory approvals' implies the test is near there as does 'The Board anticipates strong near-term newsflow relating to the COVID-19 test developments with Cytiva and Adeptrix,'
I think that this is all very positive.

Thanks Cautious, I had missed the mention of OEM's. I wonder if they will use this route as a transition - trying to get large scale product up and running in a few weeks would not be easy.
I have only done protein purification at a research level so I know some of the issues but not sure how this works on scale or the commercial aspects of it.

Have Avacta got the facilities to produce and purify large quantities of affirmer protein(s) on site, or do they contract this out? I assume up until now they have only required research amounts rather than industrial scale production. If they intend to produce it themselves then it does explain the fund raise as they would need fermenters and the equipment to extract and purify the proteins on the scale needed for millions of tests.
Indirectly, I take this as confirmation that they already have a working test strip (although the hyperbole with the placing indicated this to be the case) such that once it was confirmed to be OK, they have a requirement to scale up production.
Does anyone know the technical details of their production methods, is it batch culture, extraction, then clean up using cleavable affinity tags? Are there any issues with the proteins going into inclusion bodies, folding etc?

Thank you, an interesting analysis.

that makes 156 useful posts (not including this one..) , not convinced there have been anywhere near that many.

Absolutely, also 'its newly developed saliva-based rapid test for the COVID-19 antigen, subject to regulatory approvals' implies the test is near there as does 'The Board anticipates strong near-term newsflow relating to the COVID-19 test developments with Cytiva and Adeptrix,'
I think that this is all very positive.

It was not long ago that I remember everyone complaining about the 18p placing, this at least raises a lot more money for an equal dilution....

In addition to his performance shares (really?), JW purchased 50,000 shares - quite bullish for the future price as he has a reputation for buying and selling at optimal times. His last purchase was at the bottom of the dip, so I assume this quarter is going well, possibly with some other good news as well?

Dimi, thanks for your observations about Bibiani. I had seen a similar sentiment expressed elsewhere. The fact that it has been passed about and then just sat there implies it may not be the hottest prospect, although from their last report on it in 2018 - 'the potential for Bibiani to produce ~100,000oz annually at a LOM AISC of US$764/oz for ten years' -sounds like there could be potential. They were waiting for approval for the tailing facility and mine operating permit towards the end of last year, so not sure how this is progressing.
They also picked up other rights from Toro - 'a highly prospective and expansive exploration portfolio including Toro Gold's substantial African exploration tenement package covering over 2,800km2 across Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire and Guinea'
JW's recent purchase makes me wonder if we may soon be hearing something about future developments ….

Whitegate, You are not the first :o)
I have found JW is unbelievably good at responding to any questions I have asked. Far better than any other company I have put questions to. Sometimes I have just asked that a certain point could be clarified at the next quarterly presentation and then received a long explanatory reply from him the next day.
The impression I get is that their belief is that if they can hit their production targets and get 85% recovery at Syama then the shorts will close shares will rerate. I think that we are already seing signs of this.

This probably explains the dip for the past few trading days. 16% dilution, but they got this off at a very good price, bodes well for the future. The cost of a 'deep clean' is not cheap- I know a head of a primary school who had to have one - £15k - so there must be a good profit on this type of work.

There was I thread about the MS test some days ago.
The link below shows how the detection of protein biomarkers by MS is being used to look at peoples response to Covid infection. The methodology is slightly different to that used by Adeptirx/ Avacta, however it is easy to see how BAMS could be used to improve this type of analysis in a clinical setting.
I am not convinced that the Adeptrix sars cov2 test will be a big money spinner , but I can see a very big future for this type of analysis and the collaboration with Adeptrix has the potential to lead to a huge future market for developing other assays in multiple clinical applications.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405471220301976

Well it looks like it did not quite make it, it should be on the reserve list though and it is quite likely that there will be several moving from this into the index over the next quarter.
I always wonder to what extent the price changes in some of the companies on the borders at the rebalance are the result of alignment for the rebalance or a degree of manipulation to ensure the elevation (or otherwise) of a particular company.
It does seem odd that with a share buyback started that the price is the lowest it has been since early May.....

That's a nice summary ChunkyD, I would add a very competent management team to your list.
I have built back my holding in this now that all of the stores have opened again (although they have been trading online since early April).
HAT has always been considered a good counter cyclic holding especially with high POG. I was concerned about the potential loss of foreign currency income but it is actually quite a small part of the total revenue. Hopefully they will also soon reach a resolution with the FCA over their HCSTC loans, without this it would likely have settled at well over 400 pre -covid.

Dimi, Thanks for your thoughts on possible future directions, some interesting points there that I had not come across before.
One of the reasons buying into rsg in the first place was the multiple jurisdiction's and a potential future pipeline, to what then was a theoretical 750k pa. This has already changed with the sale of Ravenswood and if they sell Bibiani then we are down to just the two remaining sites. I can see why they have had to do this but it does leave one wandering about what happens next.

They have now had a further couple of months to draft their FDA submission, so submission should now just be waiting for the final control samples.
Nice to see it tick up back to 70p again. Sar cov2 has shined a light on the biotech and diagnostics industry so hopefully this will carry through to Angle as well.

Despite what I believe has been a good (financial) response by the government, much of the assistance (beyond the furlough scheme) are deferred payements and loans (all of which have interest charged). The assistance has allowed companies to remain solvent for now but as these deferrals and loans become due a lot of companies will not be able to make the repayments and will sadly go under.

Dimi, This has not been one of my better choices … but back in the blue now though, helped by topping up in the low 30s after JW's buy hinted that we were near te bottom.
The volume traded on the lse is small compared to the asx but it was sometimes running up on the lse then getting pushed back on the asx. When I checked this usually coincided with an increase in shorts on the asx. I am hoping that once they are out a run on here will be continued on the asx to generate a bit of upwards momentum.
Clearly if the next quarters results are not as expected then this will change things but so far the signals are good
The third quarter should be very good with all of the low value hedging behind us.
After this it is a much harder call, will they sell Bibiani? What are the cost of another underground mine in Mali ? They say it will be a low cost option but their track record on this is not great, on the other hand they may have learned to control the cost better now.
What are your thoughts?