Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
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?
I agree. Pret is a good example - it’s cheaper and higher quality, and also had a strong high street presence and has remained open to a far higher degree, so many may have “made the switch”.
While I think all the “the office is dead” talk overblown, I do agree that some people will take the opportunity to wfh a day or two a week - and it seems likely that the group of people with the freedom to do that will likely be a similar group to those with £5 to blow on a sandwich every morning.
My suspicion is that air travel for business will take a proportionately bigger hit - while I know many people who miss the human interaction in the office, I know very few who miss business travel, especially regular travel. Plus the high cost will be harder to justify now that we know remote meetings are “good enough”.
All of that said - I do wonder if SSP has further to go as a “recovery play”. In general the recovery move has been fairly muted in the UK, particularly when compared to the US where many lockdown-affected shares are at an ATH. Investors here seem to be more cautious - which is commendable - and I believe that the continuing uncertainty around variants, vaccine uptake and safety etc is still weighing down these recovery stocks; I’m bullish on the recovery and hope that this weight will be lifted over the next couple of months as lockdown continues to ease up.
So I agree that I won’t be holding these long term... but not quite ready to give up on them yet!
Thanks Chris
Another part of whether this is a good investment is the opportunity cost. Even if there is a turnaround, there's no way of knowing when it would be (although it feels like several months until a potential trading update is a _minimum_). But if it does turn around then, given how low it is now, it could be a multi-bagger, and still represent a very good return, even if there is months of waiting.
If you have other strong ideas on where to put your money where you expect to see results sooner, that could definitely make sense. I personally am playing the "covid recovery" stocks pretty hard (NEX, FLTA, SSPG, GOG etc), so am thinking of LOOP as more of a diversifying high-risk-high-reward punt. I wouldn't want it to be the core of my portfolio!
I don't think it's a massive mystery why the price is where it is. The question is, is it the holders who are selling at the current price who have missed something, or is it the rest of us who are holding on who will be holding the bag?
I think the overwhelming narrative for almost everyone who looks into LOOP will be "this is a teleconferencing company that manged to do badly during lockdown". As a first impression that is very bad.
Then we have the fact that their new business model involves a risky pivot (they use the euphemism "transitional year" several times in their March 30 statement).
The statement also acknowledges that "it will naturally take some time to nurture and develop these opportunities
through the pipeline sales cycles stages" and "a potentially lower level of top line revenue". This is the opposite to the idealised growth comany where the top line always grows, preferably exponentially. Being a small tech company, LOOP is definitely in the "growth" bucket for most investors, and the prospect of decreasing revenues is a big turn off.
Finally, the only analysts who seem to be covering LOOP, Progressive Equity Research, cut their revenue AND profit expectations for 2021 (the estimated profit for 2021 is now negative; I'm not sure what it was before the revision) because "The RNS strikes a cautious tone on near-term sales, so we take management’s cue and modestly reduce expectation for 2021."
So that's it - many potential investors will take one, two or even three looks at LOOP and decide it isn't for them. We don't need any market manipulation or aggressive shorting theories to explain it.
Could there be a turnaround? I'm still here, so personally I think it's worth a punt, but I acknowledge it's a risk.
- Ocelot's theory on why LOOP's new business model is a strong offering is compelling
- Despite the analysts saying they "take management's cue and reduce expectation", LOOP's statement also says "the Group is confident in its ability to meet market profitability expectations for FY2021". Could be a surprise on the upside here
- in general this feels like a market overreaction. The market is reeling from realising LOOP isn't what they hoped it would be (a high-growth tech stock in the remote networking space, an area that the pandemic put in the spotlight) and are shunning it unfairly; eventually they will take another look and - I hope - agree that it represents a bargain.
Feels like the market as a whole is a bit edgy about the AZ news and it's potential impact on the vaccine rollout & easing lockdown - not unreasonable.
Bear in mind that in normal times North America accounts for ~40% of profit and the US vaccine rollout is going great.
Still very bullish on this.
I think that would have caused a sharper drop - the slow and steady decline normally means one big holder selling down.
But agree that the current news could make people jittery. On balance I think the re-opening is likely to continue according to plan, since we've already achieved enough with the vaccination rollout such that hospitalisations should be kept low, and we have more vaccine suppliers coming online (i.e. Moderna). But whether the market agrees is another question...
NEX does lots of business in the US where the rollout is going great and isn't affected by AZ.
Slow and steady decline today looks like a large holder selling down their position.
Maybe just taking profits after a good couple of days? Still surprising since I'm expecting this to continue upwards.
n00b question, but for the "LOOP Share Trades" buy / sell info, how does it determine what's a buy and what's a sell? Surely every trade has both a buyer and a seller?
I assume it's about who crosses the spread - so a buy is when a buyer crosses the spread and removes an existing sell order and vice versa - but wanted to clarify if anyone knows for sure.
No, you haven't missed out.
The big move today was because the shares went ex-rights, which effectively means the deadline for determining who gets to take part in the rights issue has passed. If you already owned shares then you're in.
You should be hearing from your broker by EOW (or early next week) with details on how to take part. I'm going to give mine a call if I haven't heard anything within a week or so.
I'm also sticking to my theory that there was selling last week so that investors could realize losses and offset some gains for CGT purposes. We might see those actors trickling back in as the B&B period expires, assuming they're still interested.
Very interesting idea, and fingers crossed that you're on the money here Ocelot.
I guess from my point of view this still isn't ideal. I came into LOOP thinking of it as a classic value play, and now it has become a turnaround story - and in a slightly different industry (telecoms vs software) that I'm much less informed about.
That doesn't mean that LOOP isn't a great investment - it just means I feel much less confident in making that call!