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"Didn't someone say free tests were extended to March 2022, and will be reviewed again at that point."

I don't know who someone is, and what someone said, I know the autumn/winter plan said "continue in the coming months"

As has been pointed out by many people, many times, including CK, the contract has no minimum value. How much more evidence do people need than the fact that the tender was awarded over 7 months ago and not a single LFT has been supplied. Therefore assuming they do start supplying, gov can stop doing call-offs at any time.

The contract is one thing, but the winter plan says "The Government will therefore continue to provide the public with access to free lateral flow tests in the coming months....... At a later stage, as the Government’s response to the virus changes, universal free provision of LFDs will end, and individuals and businesses using the tests will bear the cost."

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-response-autumn-and-winter-plan-2021/covid-19-response-autumn-and-winter-plan-2021
(see paragraph 6 under "Identifying and isolating positive cases to limit transmission")

A clear intention to stop giving them away. It is of course possible that the horizon moves again, like it did from end of Aug, but the intention is clearly signposted.

But is time running out for the gov test contract ?

We are 7 months+ since it was signed. Gov had plans to stop free tests last month, but its been extended now for "several months". Lets say all of this year. That would mean 3 full months left of free LFTs.

If due to lack of confidence in the result or whatever, the public aren't exactly falling over themselves to use FREE tests, what then for the opportunity once they have to pay for them ? In the uk, do we go from trying to sell tests to the gov, to trying to sell tests to boots ?

Covid may be around for years to come, but a gov contract based on gov giving away tests is not.

This approaching horizon of free tests ending puts a different complexion on ODX covid opportunity, bearing in mind that CK said the covid opportunity is very dependant on the uk gov contract.

Spot the difference

On twitter:-
"Regulatory approval in the US/CE marking for self-test use for VISITECT(R) COVID-19 Antigen test will be transformative"

RNS (the channel that actually matters).
"Regulatory approvals in the US and CE marking for self-test use for our VISITECT(R) COVID-19 Antigen test will provide the catalyst for sales opportunities. "

It's entirely an accident that that sentence starts exactly the same way, but ends up entirely different....isn't it ?

Scorp, they just put out an RNS, if there was any news, it would be in there. It won't be in the AGM RNS.

I agree it was a strange decision to put out an RNS. ODX have in the past just put out a 1 or 2 sentence RNS to confirm the AGM happened and have not otherwise put out an RNS on AGM day.

There was no news in that RNS that demanded releasing. So in deciding to do the RNS, they locked themselves into having to comment on the major elements of the business, and put themselves in a position of revealing they were no further forward in any way in any of the key things that are waited on, most notably that the imminent significant antibody deals/orders/regulatory approval with 3 countries had not happened. and the gov contract.

But having frothed people up on twitter in recent days, and created a sense of almost guaranteed assurances of the great antibody progress on full results day, to have put out nothing may have been received poorly.

So its a situation of their own making, creating artificial timeframe expectations that are then not acheived is a recurring theme for ODX.

For example I noted in the ABDX trading update 12th of aug, 1 month after the ODX RNS, there was absolutely no sense of imminency for antibody approval/orders from 3 countries nor any wording about significant orders, they said

"The Company has not seen significant commercial traction with the AbC-19(TM) product to date but remains encouraged by the ongoing discussions in various overseas territories"

So given ABDX is the one who is doing these sales efforts, you have to wonder on what basis did ODX decide to up expectations ?

That's just one example where there is very clear evidence that the rhetoric doesn't match the information available.

“we are optimistic that these will conclude successfully and positively impact on our H2 performance.”

If ODX have taught us anything, it's that you need to dismiss their forward looking statements, they are entirely unreliable. However what you can conclude from that is the implication that the latest 6 months (Apr-Sept), is bust...again.

So what now about those 92M tests now that the happy clappers were saying were in the bag, because of Lord B tweets.
What now of the NDA brigade
What now of the "you're mad, those 250 employees are hardly twiddling their thumbs" brigade.

And as for the cassetting, ODX owes DHSC £2.9M. DHSC hasn't paid a penny to ODX in the last 3 months. So you can conclude that the cassetting hasn't resulted in that debt being wiped out, otherwise DHSC would have been paying money to ODX. Meanwhile Surescreen is getting £25M a month after month. The cassetting is chicken feed money.

"Colin can’t do much more, he’s done well getting Omega into this position today, but he is now in the hands of others."

The CEO ultimately has the responsibility for the company's fortunes. A CEO that has overseen and implemented a strategy that results in the fortunes of the entire covid opportunity of the business being in the hands of others has lost control of that opportunity. And covid is the reason why nearly all of us are in ODX.

In july we were told the significance of their entire antigen opportunity was very much dependant on the uk gov contract.

Today, that contract gets the shortest paragraph in the RNS, and the progress since then is "positive dialogue".
Big F*cking whoop.

And that big twitter froth that they created because of the biden announcement, they just re-iterated that the FDA approval they are waiting on won't allow them to address that opportunity....professional use only...you'll note self test in that market didn't even get mentioned as being thought about. And because its an RNS and not frothy twitter, note the lack of mention of this biden announcement nor that the US is a *key* market.

Oh and those antibody deals in 3 countries that were imminent inJuly...no change, now there is a new definition of imminent.

And in case anyone failed to notice, not a single word about production, you know, making stuff, what a manufacturer is supposed to do, not historic, not stockpile, not forward looking...nothing.

Well thats just a f*cking marvellous RNS

get ready for the happy clappers to start singing cumbyah around the campfire.

"The Government will therefore continue to provide the public with access to free
lateral flow tests in the coming months....At a later stage, as the Government’s response to the virus changes, universal free
provision of LFDs will end, and individuals and businesses using the tests will bear thecost. "

Sounds like ODX will get their contract just around the time gov stops supplying tests for free.

sounds just about spot, sign that guy up for the super secret telegram and whatsapp group immediately !

A. 92 million tests already in the bag
All by Surescreen, £125M received by them already, and that's not including august, which will be another £25M if the previously 4 months are anything to go by.

B. 15 million production per week agreed with UK diagnostics
That is not what he said he said "increase production CAPACITY from ~400K ~15M" NOWHERE did he say anything about agreeing 15M production per week with UK diagnostics.

C. 21 million capacity by year's end
This is almost right. he said ~20M

D. Over £300 million invested so far
Sounds great, but over £280M of it wasn't to ODX, £17M kit, £2.9M pre-production costs (the £2.9M will be repaid).

E. ODX, Surescreen and GAD specified 3 companies for transformational change.
Surescreen is 1/4 thru it's £500M tender award, no timeframe for ODX (or GAD). It has transformed ODXs capacity to 2M a week.

All facts, unlike the original list.

"So £100M a year profit ? Potentially if full capacity to DHSC?
Where does that put the share price at in your opinion ?"

exactly where, I've no idea, and BTW I've never once quoted target SP or said the SP was too low or too high, or advised people to buy or sell.

Clearly, it would put the SP in a MUCH healthier position than today.

As I've said since end of 2020, orders is what this SP needs. Tweets, hopes and fanciful wanderlust at one time would drive this SP, but that's long past. Give me visibility of orders and I'll be a happy chappy. As soon as more people admit that's what we need now, and not "imminent" / "transformational" words, or political speeches, the better.

For example here we are in mid sept, and still no word on those 3 countries that were going to make significant RTC orders imminently according to the 13th July presentation.

Oke, wasn't the whole PD thing supposed to go away in Sept, replaced with a desktop validation process ?

Now of course we can't be sure that ODX sell price will be exactly the same as Surescreen, but we also know that it has to be in the ball park, as they are all HMG tenders.

If ODX test is selected, then we DO know that GAD's ex works price to Africa nations at $2 a go. That may or may not be slightly subsidised price, that they may recoup from selling to wealthier nations (given their strong social bent), but lets assume that's their break even cost $2 equates to £1.44. Their production costs have to be similar to ODX, given that they are based in the UK, and will have similar standing costs.

So, accepting that there are quiet a few variables involved that are far from exact, it looks entirely possible that a profit of £1 per test is doable for the HMG contract.

We know average over the last 4 months, surescreen have received approx £25M each month from HMG for tests.

We don’t know surescreen capacity. We can guess somewhere between odx 2M and gad 3M a week, based on the relative tenders awards.

With 4.3 weeks in a month, that 8.6M to 12.9m tests a month. £25M a month means we can make a reasonable guess that they are being paid between £1.9 and £2.9 a test.

Again given the relative size of the tenders, it looks to me around £2.50, which is a very decent return, if we can get gov production going, and a lot cheaper than the £4 being charged by Innova.(figure from Scottish gov)

lse meets tinder

"Saying things like this is just building false expectation"
Now there's a phrase that was never previously typed by sledgey121 on the odx forum !

But because it's me, I'm ramping as a precursor to a pending deramp :) marvellous

I can tell you a phrase that seldgey121 did type on the odx forum:-
"The amount of antibodies makes no difference to how a person copes with covid infection. "
30th June 8:29am, if anyone cares to check.

"Twatcher, the original post to this thread was yesterday."

"Mars1
Today 00:56"

Dunno why you are now tangenting to what day the 1st post was posted (how does that even matter ?) ...but you can't even get that right ?

I've no knowledge in these things, but the clinical part of it would have been done as part of its professional use, and given that GAD used the clinical data from the Apr find study when presenting the Covios test, I'm assuming it's a given that the ODX clinical data is as per the GAD/Covios data.

This uni study is to support the self-test element of the submission.