Member Info for NiptSteve

With Clarigene and our lab facilities we’ve positioned ourselves nicely to hopefully grab a slice of this:

“ UK set to award Covid-19 testing contracts worth £5bn to private bidders”

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/02/uk-set-to-award-covid-19-testing-contracts-worth-5bn-to-private-bidders

Not seen it myself but there is talk on another bb and Twitter of a joint front page advert from Yourgene and Caxton about getting workplaces covid tested.

You never know we may even get some associated test volume figures with this test as each business is a known size.

Circa 18 months on from the litigation settlement and almost two weeks since CE marking I naively expected the commercial launch to have happened by now along with a lot more info on the website.

Maybe we are looking at commercial launch on Monday followed by clarigene update on Tuesday. Wonder what the share price will be by the time we get this news.

Frustrating.

I’d hope to see the official launch of the Illumina test next week with the research only version of the covid test the week after.

Be good to get our first EU customer on Illumina as well.

Good to have approval and I look forward to more detail alongside the official launch.

"we look forward to working in partnership with them to expand our reach into significant parts of the market that were previously unavailable to us."

Implies Illumina will be helping us to get our test into labs - why would they do that as they have their own test to sell? Perhaps they are more interest in machine sales rather than NIPT.

After the last RNS where it mentioned it had been recommended for approval I had expected it last week based on a similar comment for the TF IONA test, but I guess the covid approvals are taking priority which I can understand.

Lets hope when we submit our covid test for CE mark it gets equally quick attention!

By the time this comes through any rise will only take us back to where we were a few weeks ago if we are lucky. Having attended investor presentations prior to Christmas I had expected/hoped for CE to land Jan-Mar not June!

I guess the positive is that we should get a number of genuine material pieces of news in quick succession the longer it takes to arrive.

With the original IONA test we had an RNS 5 days prior to receiving the CE mark to say we had met two key requirements which read similar to the comment in today’s update so maybe news next week on the launch of our Illumina NIPT test?

Completely unexpected news today re the covid test - clearly the board believe there room in the market for us. With our initial involvement with Novacyt my expectation was that it was a useful revenue stream to maybe cover any impact on our core business - much more hopeful that this could have a significant impact.

That circa 8million sell at 16.25 would have certainly held things back!

Interesting Sky News article featuring Source Bioscience and how they are one of a small number of private companies processing the covid tests for the NHS. They hope to increase their capacity from 1,000 to 5,000 tests per day in the next few weeks.

No mention of how much they make per test but assuming we are one of the other private labs processing the tests then maybe we are looking at around the same sort of volume? Not sure how our lab compares to theirs.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-private-company-rises-to-exceptional-challenge-to-double-antigen-testing-11991338

I would guess that our NHS testing involvement is at most with the local NHS trust.

TW reply to that tweet ends “ethical investors will avoid this company at all costs”.

You couldn’t make it up!!

Agreed Twix - it also looks like we are open to contract manufacturing on a more permanent basis going forward with this new page on the website:

https://www.yourgene-health.com/services/contract-manufacturing

Separately, surely CE mark is going to land in the next couple of weeks - NIPT growth within EU continues with Belgium NIPT tender so the sooner this lands the better so we can be in the mix for these.

Extract from an article in today’s paper saying how officials identified a standardised type of PCR machine by Thermo Fisher that was needed and army was deployed to collect as many machines as possible from universities and private labs and take to the megalabs.

It’s clear that we have the in-demand piece of PCR kit but I wonder whether with the megalabs they now have enough capacity without our help?

Hopefully an RNS this week with an update.

Frustrating if Illumina news is so far away although I doubt they could have done much off the back of it in current situation.

Just to highlight the tweet from Yourgene that I mentioned earlier:

https://twitter.com/yourgene_health/status/1250401462183755778?s=21

“manufacturing covid-19 testing kits”. Hopefully they have made that leap from components to the whole test.

Note the graphic that says "manufacturing covid-19 testing kits" - hope that's the case and we have moved on from just the critical components.

Looks like the lab was open over the weekend - from Twitter:

"We hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Easter weekend. We would like to say a special thank you to our #WeekendWarriors for giving their time this weekend to ensure our customer demand is met."

I would assume this was related to covid testing/production.

Twix assuming you are right and the Illumina CE lands in May/June what do you put the delay down to? I’d heard we’d been very thorough and detailed in our submission so it can only be down to delays with the approving authority surely?

Re the covid testing I see on Twitter our service lab has been closed over the bank holiday so whether this was closed in relation to core business and still doing the urgent covid work who knows but again hopefully there will be an RNS this week to clarify our involvement.

So Thermo have agreed to meet the UK demand of 100k tests per day - having read an article in the times they say the tests are carried out at UK testing centres then sent to one of the three big hubs for processing. We really need some clarity over where/if we fit into this side of things - I cannot believe we are not being utilised by Thermo giving our relationship but confirmation and an idea on numbers would be good.