Member Info for tommy15

Haha well massive kudos for your honesty! I too am feeling foolish for being lured in by this value trap, am likely to be seeking the exits very soon.

Fair enough. Out of interest, what made you reach this conclusion 2 weeks after the update?

There's a grim irony that this company in particular hasn't bothered to set up a virtual event to host its AGM...

Hmm yes - while on the one hand I can see that the message of "we have access to tons of cash" is a good thing to tell potential customers, it doesn't sound great for us investors.

OTOH, at least he was careful to add "if ever required".

The Feb presentation mentions the £20m HSBC facility, of which, at the time of writing, only £8m had been drawn down. Between the remaining loan available and the fact that incoming cash from previous cases is apparently enough to cover costs, I'm hopeful that they won't need to turn to the markets to raise cash.

The interesting thing here is that the dry period for the last ~year almost certainly will lead to cash flow problems at some point in the future - maybe 6-12 months - because of the delays involved. But at the point where that starts to bite, if all goes to plan, MANO will be snowed under with work from all the pent-up cases and will probably be in a much stronger position to borrow money - again, the business model will be proven; current trading will be rampant; and the short-term cash-flow hole that needs plugging would be a very understandable blip.

Then we start getting into areas that I find very hard to judge. Will MANO be able to take out more loans easily enough, based on the above? Woud they turn to the markets instead? If so, would the SP have risen already to reflect the fact that business is booming, or would it still be dampened because of exactly these uncertainties? That would affect the degree of dilution, which would make a low share price even lower...

Long term I'm very positive about MANO, and I think this is a great price to be in at. Medium term I'm a little concerned by the above - and it may mean that it takes longer to realise the returns than I'd otherwise like. Maybe the sensible thing would be to come back later - but with all the unknowns the timing would be very difficult. And with fewer unknowns - more certainty - the price will likely rise, and I don't want to miss out on that. I do know that I'm happy owning at this price, so I'll make do with that!

This article gives the slightly less pessimistic view of the current variant debate https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57150871

Ugh yeah that is grim, but I still think there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is mounting evidence that the vaccine works against the Indian variant and, small hesistant populations aside, the uptake has been fantastic.

But it would certainly be a blow to MANO if the insolvency freeze was extended again.

Trading in and out feels essentially like gambling though. I'm in this for the long term, and whether the turnaround comes in one month or four makes little difference.

Apart from the obvious thing holding the price down - the insolvency freeze - I suspect the complex and opaque accounting of these companies is a turn-off for many, which is reasonable (but could also be an oppurtunity). The main leap of faith is accepting that actual cash flow lags recognised revenues by some considerable time period. This leads to "dodgy" looking accounts that claim to be super profitable while consistently showing low or negative cash flows, but if you accept that that is just what the accounting model is for these companies - and that e.g. ROIC can't be like-for-like compared with other industries in a meaningful way - then it no longer seems suspicious. Essentially it seems similar to capitalising R&D.

Note the low cash flows are also why MANO can't realistically pay much of a dividend.

MANO is growing, taking on more staff and cases each year (Covid mega-blip aside), and for the last few years the cash from the previous year's cases (or the year before's) haven't been enough to cover the current year's operations, hence borrowing and floating. However, in their Feb shareholder presentation they explicitly state that they have now reached the point where cash coming in from settled/won cases is enough to cover the current year's costs - i.e. no more need for borrowing, and potential for higher dividend. And if they did want to borrow in order to fund more rapid growth, I would be comfortable - because the business model has been proven to work.

So this feels like an exciting time to be long MANO. It will definitely take time for the market to come around, and any more delays to insolvency proceedings would definitely be bad, but the overall story feels very positive.

The "opening floodgates" of work just waiting for when the insolvency proceedings are able to start again is just icing on the cake.

BigBoo2 what news are you referring to? General variant woes and the possibility of extended lockdown?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/05/13/no-social-distancing-buses/

Apparently this hadn't been made clear until just now.

Wonder whether this will give us a little bump tomorrow - GLA

I've never gone through anything like this before - don't suppose there's any chance of us lowly shareholders getting compensated in any way if it turns out there HAS been manipulation?

Mr_Big your first response here made me literally lol, thanks for that! And I take your point - I won't take any legal advice I read here without a dollop of salt, but it's still interesting to read people's thoughts on the matter.

Docdaneeka - why is it suspicious? I "jump on at the weekend" because guess what, that's when I have free time, and this share just recently caught my eye. I "start 2 guaranteed punch up threads" because I'm hoping to understand some of the thorny issues that are extremely pertinent to making an investment in this share. As the responses to the threads show, opinions are still divided, and seeing the different opinions and justifications for them has actually been helpful for me.

It winds me up no end that anyone asking valid questions about a company / investment thesis gets immediately shouted down by the masses.

If your point is that these questions have alreay been asked and answered on this forum, then fair enough - unfortunately LSE doesn't have a good search functionality to go back through old threads to try to find interesting information. But actually, the investment thesis here depends heavily on the pandemic, which is a fast moving situation, so revisitng "answered" questions can still be helpful. And if this forum isn't about answering these questions as they come up, then what is it for exactly? Copy-pasting RNSs and talking into an echo chamber??

If they do get SNG001 approved for COVID - with the accelerated schedule that all COVID treatments seem to have - would that boost their efforts to get it approved for COPD? Or would it be completely unrelated?

Presumably they could skip some safety steps, if not efficacy?

No games, I'm just ignorant about this stuff. I tried to make that clear in my original post.

Trying to understand these things before making a potentially risky investment seems like a reasonable use of my time.

You could accuse me of being lazy - asking these questions on a forum rather than trying to bone up on patent law - and that's fair. Was just hoping someone could help!

And to be honest my question is still relevant. How "specific" is their "specific formulation"? Would their patent prevent any other company from making a nebulised form of IFN? If so then great; if not, that's worth knowing.

Owl11 I do get that. But it doesn't seem to have happened yet, and there are encouraging signs that the virus has a relatively small pool of viable potential mutations - which is why similar ones keep cropping up.

But yes, there is always the possiblity of full vaccine escape, in which case we would be very fortuante to have a treatment like this (if it's as successful as is hoped). So in a way investing here could be a "hedge" against all the other mayhem that would occur if escape does happen! But I'm an optimist, and feel that vaccines (+ boosters for variants if needed) will do the trick.

I have seen several articles reporting that Synairgen has "submitted a patent application for the use of inhaled interferon beta in Covid-19 patients."

I understand that IFN is an existing treatment that has been used to treat multiple diseases over the years (often until a more specific treatment is found).

I also understand that the concept of atomisation / nebulisation is widely used for inhaled drug delivery.

Can they really patent the concept of giving a standard drug via a a standard method for a particular disease?

How much protection is there against another company doing something similar?

My knowledge of the legal side of this stuff is nil, so I'm sure I've missed something. But I'm struck by how neither the drug itself nor the method of delivery is "new" here.

Apologies if this has been covered here before - as I'm sure it must have been - but I'm curious for thoughts about how large a role medicines will play in the fight against COVID.

It's clear that, for whatever reason, the main thrust of the biomedical response to COVID right now is with vaccines. There are multiple approved vaccines, with many more on the way. Early indications from Israel and the UK show that the vaccines are doing a fantastic job of keeping cases down, and so far there is no compelling in-vivo evidence of significant vaccine escape by the variants. There are supply bottlenecks now, but huge resources are being poured in to improving the supply chain.

Given the above, and the fact that we are still many months (at the very least) away from Synairgen having the go-ahead to supply its IFN treatment, how are people considering the actual size of the market for treatments like IFN?

As an extreme example, no-one is researching medicines to treat measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox or polio - those diseases have been "solved" by vaccines.

It seems unlikely that COVID will be "solved" to the same degree; I'm sure people will still continue to get sick ( <100% update & <100% efficacy of vaccine etc), and it's fantastic to have a treatment for them from a humanitarian point of view. But as an investment, I'm not convinced that the absolute numbers of such patients will be high enough to make this a real blockbuster drug.

Very open to being persuaded otherwise. I'm sure there are aspects of this I've missed. It seems like IFN could be used to treat all sorts of LRT infections? But would it then need a separate approval process?

Thanks all

Webba, you say " spend is materially lower for business traveller than the leisure brigade." - do you have any sources for that?

I'm still going over whether I want to stick with SPG long term (I'm expecting more of a bounce as things continue to open up short term). There is going to be less business travel in the future, and I'm not convinced that this won't have a meaningful impact on SPG's numbers.

I used to fly semi-regularly with work. We would fly economy / premium-economy, but be able to expense any spend on food/drink at the airport (with a limit high enough that effectively we could have whatever we wanted). I was happy because I could eat / drink whatever I wanted on the company's dime - rather than being stuck with whatever the lounge was offering - and the company saved money by not paying for business class. I have no idea now common this model is, but it seems pretty reasonable to me.

Your point on the rights issue is interesting. I understand the airport food business is highly framented, and some of those smaller businesses will have been struggling, giving a good oppurtunity for SPG to make some aquisitions. However, when we're talking about a bigger piece of a smaller pie, it's hard to know if it ends up being an improvement overall!

I think the sector is down after a few announcements by big companies that they would be moving to a “hybrid model” - essentially allowing more WFH and reducing the number of commuters travelling on any given day.

I think the effect of this on NEX is way overblown though, since this shouldn’t affect their operations on school busses; intercity coaches; or even intra-city bus services in the many cities they serve that don’t have a preponderance of workers who are able to WFH easily.

So like many others here I’m mildly frustrated at recent performance but very confident for the medium-long term

Same, all I can see is the HSBC downgrade of GOG. I can't find the content of the analysis anywhere but presumably it's bearish on public transport in general (changing commutor patterns, lingering fear over Covid etc).

schjmh you're absolutely right, apologies. But the crux of my point still stands - I'm still not sure it's reasonoable to expect that degree of recovery for quite some time.

Mary out of interest where does 700p come from?

This share was a little under 600p before the pandemic; since then it's been through a year of basically no rervenue, significant dilution, and the prospect of real long-term changes in commuter patterns meaning less footfall and, ultimately, less revenue.

I'm curious whether I've missed something that could take this share to a new all-time-high despite all of the above?