 Gareth,
My Serum theme here is that they can make any vaccine they like in India much cheaper than in the UK. The WHO say R21 is so important that they will not risk it all being produced in one territory. That's my only explanation for Serum doing the 10 year bioreactor reservation deal with us and a similar deal with the Wockhardt fill / finish factory in Wales.
I can't make anything else fit but I have been wrong before. 5 weeks tonight is the cut-off for the last FTSE reshuffle of the year. Will there be a Serum announcement by then? No idea. I wouldn't even like to guess at the chances.
But (but, but, but) it takes a long time to prepare for this kind of work, then a very long time to prepare the quantity of doses they are talking about, then the QA/QC testing, then the fill / finish.
Someone eventually has to pull the lever in anticipation and it is undoubtedly government level stuff. Two tier could do with a bit of good news to distract the public from his performance so far. He could do a lot worse than this and what would it cost our foreign aid budget for him to promise GAVI UK made R21 Malaria vaccines?
We will see. I suspect the FDA review meetings and / or the myeloma CAR-T news is much more likely in the next 5 weeks, but there will of course be other stuff of which we have seen nothing to guess at. |
Tedious isn't it yet another ground hog day |
Maybe 2 plus 2 equals 5 Mr President, Sir but it's possible and if so..... |
I'm going to sit on the fence Dom.
If I understand this correctly (apply guess factor at this point) the WHO get the money from GAVI so that UNICEF can buy the vaccines.
GAVI is funded mainly by foreign aid budgets from countries like us and super wealthy foundations like Gates.
Serum have made 25m doses and it has taken them a long time, but this is aided by the shelf life / storage requirements for R21.
They say that they can scale up using their home facilities (remember that they do a lot of other vaccines besides) to 100m doses per year and then expand to 180m.
As you point out, the WHO has stated that it's such an important vaccine that it mustn't all be manufactured in one territory for security of supply. With that in mind it seems reasonable to suggest that Serum's investment in OXB and reservation / right of first refusal of the large bioreactor gets them out of the restriction whilst still benefiting from the deal.
The question being at what number of doses does the two then three territory rule for manufacture kick in.
I would make the random point here that Bill Gates has been in Downing Street today and that his foundation is a massive vaccine donor. Presumably one of the things he would want to talk to free gear about is UK HMG chipping in for malaria as it's a very big thing for him.
You would hope (and I know this is a bit of a dream) that as HMG's SAGE advisor Patrick Vallance is now Minister of State for Science in the Department for Science, he will know everything about OXB's / Serum's role in the last lot and very likely the tie-up we are talking about here.
Surely if Bill Gates is here to talk about vaccines and eradicating malaria (his 2 biggest interests) and Patrick (who knows us) is two tier's special advisor on difficult thinking, then the correct response is "Yes Bill, my government will chip in for R21 manufacture, but only if x% is made in the UK.".
As I say, a bit of a dream but you never know. |
It should have been 12 months ago Mr President. We know that WHO require manufacturers on each continent to reduce risk. However, could it be that the £50m was a worthwhile 'cover' in case of a lost argument for doing it all in India? |
I used the wrong name Phil, but I meant the closing slide of a presentation always used to be something like "Expected Catalysts" or "Potential Newsflow" (it's had many names) where the presentation ends with a pointer to what might happen over the next period or two. |
There is a Meet Us page Harry, got a full schedule |
I think I read somewhere that if a short is less than 0.5% of the company's shares then there's no requirement to notify (a bit like holding less than 3% - or 5% if not UK based).
So if there is something going on with 3 cups and a sponge ball then we'll likely never know what.
Back to my stuck record and really we are in the hands of Frank now, who of course has the job description of managing the company on behalf of us.
We all spotted that the coming events slide has gone the way of our pipeline page, but of course we saw that there was a slide dedicated to expected FDA approvals in this quarter. If none of those were related to OXB then why did they tell us about it?
Presumably at least one of them is, and if it becomes big news before the last reshuffle of the year then it should be super deluxe crackers this Christmas dinner. |
DC..looks like that to me too...trying to tease out some of the more "bored" traders who have a short timescale and dash from stock to stock .... |
Games being played to work through large buy orders are serving to hold the share price back. |
pb3 - No. IQG actually but delayed slightly by my holiday. |
Appreciate all this is UKGold repeats from me, but:-
When OXB was sub 170p and therefore at its most vulnerable after some institutional forced selling, what happened apart from some shorters joining the party? Nothing.
I've mentioned before that if you add up those with c3% or more from the annual report then it's 51% and some of these are very long term holders. Those who can see the share register hint it's much more like 60% in safe long term hands.
There's likely only one eventual buyer (Novo) who already own more than 12% and have stated a policy to buy up good pharma service industries. Nothing says they have to buy it all. If that happens it will be on their timeline and at a price they are prepared to pay.
We've just had interims which were excellent but gave little away other than to say next year beats our pandemic record revenue without a penny from AZ and that the impairment charge situation due to losing Homology as a customer in the US has now ended.
Next year (I realise a yellow Reliant Robin image looms here) should be golden compared to the valley of death which OXB travelled through post pandemic and then with the US venture having a very unfortunate start. EBITDA profit and record earnings - even though they are almost certainly going to have to shell out for the last fraction of the US deal (albeit at a fraction of what that would have cost had Homology remained as a customer).
It's actually a very good story and compared to some of our former competitor peers (Bluebird) a brilliant story.
However, now is now and it's not next year yet. Blackrock (those honest businessmen with red braces) have bought c5% for something. Obviously to make money but we can only guess if their intentions are short or long term.
To my mind it all revolves now around the 22nd of next month and the last FTSE reshuffle cut off this year.
If something happens before then to get us +£2 from here and back into the 250 (surely has to be news from OXB?) then I think that springboard will prime us for a fantastic year next year.
If not the same thing will happen next year, it will just start later / take longer. |
All the creeping up over weeks undone in one quick shift down. |
You got your Darktrace already?End October, I'm told! |
Having just received the takeover proceeds from another (sad) US takeover of a UK company, why should I complain if market manipulation means I can now add some more OXB 5 or 10% cheaper than I was expecting? |
OXB is not alone.There are a number of second liners that are seeing some sharp and not readily explicable falls in price of late.OXB has,of course,been reluctant to break into new territory so might be considered vulnerable to a period of weakness but its all said with the confidence that comes with hindsight. |
The share price is being well and truly 'managed'. I have no idea why. |
ASGCT
Dr. Saar Gill discusses shift from ex-vivo to in-vivo cell modification. Join Thursday's session on Off the Shelf CAR-T Cells Using Direct In Vivo. |
inch by inch rather than yard by yard we creep along atm :) |
Things certainly look very positive to be back to north of £4 soon Jasie.
But on one hand, whilst I will be pleased to see us back at a share price in the 400s, I will also be slightly melancholic that we have simply returned to where we were in July last year when apparently one forced US seller triggered another and sent us spiralling down with dung flies like badger and luminaire cheering it on.
Today we own ABL Europe which seems to have been a brilliant deal for OXB on the basis of the Geovax contract alone, but who knows that apart from us - as OXB certainly haven't said.
We (as CGT CDMO) should run a premium to the sector average, but even on 5.5x and those revenue figures above? |
I meant to add that the dam may well be about to break |
Good evening all. I was talking to two medical professionals yesterday one of whom worked in gene therapy. In his words, we are on the precipice of a massive change in medical treatments and he also said that OXB were doing exactly the right thing at the right time ........ Well, we will see won't we!! |
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