Member Info for UpDiddlyUp

China also remains a challenge, but it represents only a relatively small proportion of group revenue, while Clinical, BioPharma and Applied Industrial markets continue to grow and become a larger part of the business mix.

In other words, two of the biggest concerns weighing on sentiment today may prove to be less severe than the market was pricing in when guidance was issued.

Insider confidence

One of the strongest signals, in my opinion, has been director buying.

• Chairman Duncan Tatton-Brown purchased approximately £100,000 of ONT shares. • CEO Francis Van Parys purchased 88,670 shares, investing just under £100,000 of his own money. • CFO Nick Keher purchased 22,018 shares, investing almost £25,000. • Since then, both the CEO and CFO have continued increasing their holdings through the company's Share Incentive Plan.

These purchases all came after the guidance reset and after the share price weakness, not when sentiment was high.

So why hasn't the share price responded?

In my opinion, the market is still valuing ONT as a loss-making sequencing company.

However, what I see is a business that is increasingly positioning itself as:

• A multiomics platform. • A clinical diagnostics platform. • A regulated diagnostics business. • A biopharma quality-control provider. • A company with genuine long-term optionality in protein sequencing.

The market isn't waiting for another scientific paper.

It's waiting for proof that all of this translates into:

• Accelerating revenue. • Growing clinical adoption. • Recurring consumables revenue. • A credible path to profitability.

I completely understand that.

But I also think many investors have overlooked just how much has changed strategically over the last year.

The science has always been impressive.

Now we're seeing leadership, commercial partnerships, diagnostics expertise, regulatory progress, improving external conditions, meaningful insider buying and a clear strategic shift towards higher-value applied markets all beginning to align behind it.

For me, the next 6 to 18 months are likely to determine whether ONT remains viewed as a sequencing technology company, or whether the market begins to recognise it as something much bigger.

I've spent the last few weeks digging into ONT far beyond the headline numbers, and I genuinely think the market is missing the direction of travel.

Everyone talks about the previous guidance reset and the lack of profitability, but there are a lot of signals suggesting the company is transitioning from an innovative research tools company into a clinically focused diagnostics and multiomics platform.

Leadership

The changes at the top have been significant.

• New CEO Francis Van Parys joined with a strong diagnostics and commercialisation background from Danaher/Radiometer.

• ONT appointed its first ever Chief Medical Officer, bringing experience from Radiometer, QIAGEN, WHO and ECDC.

• A new CIO joined with expertise in AI, machine learning and scaling technology businesses.

• Commercial responsibility is moving directly under the CEO from July.

Those are not the hires you make if you're simply carrying on with business as usual.

Technology

London Calling was packed with announcements, yet the market barely reacted.

Highlights included:

• PromethION Plus delivering around 20% more output without wash and reload.

• New Direct RNA 24-plex.

• Improved transcriptomics workflows.

• New Hack V6 basecaller.

• Dorado SmallVar.

• Enhanced methylation detection.

• New oncology digital panels, including a forthcoming somatic oncology methylation panel.

• Continued progress towards regulated workflows.

• Significant advances in peptide and protein sequencing, with the first demonstration of amino acid calling and protein identification on the platform.

Perhaps the most overlooked point was management repeatedly referring to regulatory readiness, expanding into applied and regulated markets, and building products specifically for clinical deployment rather than purely research use.

Commercial progress

There also appears to be steady momentum commercially.

• GridION Dx received regulatory approval.

• Cepheid expanded the partnership into Phase 2 targeting bloodstream infections and antimicrobial resistance, with an early access programme expected in Q3.

• Continued progress with bioMérieux and the AmPORE-TB programme.

• Partnerships with Lonza, Werfen, MATRIX and others.

• Increasing emphasis on regulated diagnostics, biopharma quality control and clinical workflows.

This is exactly where recurring consumables revenue could begin to accelerate if these programmes continue to mature.

The market may also be overlooking changing headwinds

Much of the weakness in ONT has been attributed to concerns over NIH funding and China.

However, since the company issued its guidance, one of those major risks has changed materially.

The proposed 40% cut to the NIH budget was not adopted by Congress, the proposal to dismantle NIH institutes was rejected, and proposed indirect cost cuts were blocked. While some grant uncertainty remains, the worst-case scenario that many investors feared has not materialised.

I'm in at 457. This has been overdone now.

This should be released as an RNS update for ONT. Why don't they try to build sentiment? Their conferences are full of good news yet their communications to the market are almost non existent.