Oxford Nanopore Technolo... Share Discussion Threads

[anastrophe] 17/1/2023 10:07

I don't see why there's been such a bad reaction to the trading update - did we expect more from the Abu Dhabi deal?

[bamboo2] 17/1/2023 07:26

17 January 2023

Oxford Nanopore Technologies plc

Trading update

-- Total Group revenue for fiscal year 2022 is expected to be approximately GBP199 million
-- Core Life Science Research Tools revenue is expected to be approximately GBP147 million during the period

-- Life Science Research Tools revenue is estimated to have grown by approximately 15.7% on a reported basis and by approximately 25% on an underlying basis(1)

Oxford Nanopore Technologies plc (LSE: ONT) ("Oxford Nanopore" or "the Group"), the innovator and provider of a new generation of molecular sensing technology based on nanopores , today provides a trading update, ahead of reporting its annual results in March.

Performance for the year ended 31 December 2022 is expected to be in line with the Life Science Research Tools ("LSRT") revenue guidance set out in the Group's 2021 annual results, on 22 March 2022.

The Group expects to report LSRT revenue for the year ended 31 December 2022, of approximately GBP147 million compared to LSRT revenue of GBP127.0 million for the year ended 31 December 2021, representing annual growth of approximately 15.7% on a reported basis and approximately 25% on an underlying basis, excluding the impact of FX, revenue from COVID-19 sequencing and revenue from the Emirati Genome Program.

The Group expects to report total revenue of approximately GBP199 million, for the year ended 31 December 2022, which includes non-recurring revenue of GBP51.8 million following the conclusion of the Group's COVID-19 testing contract with the Department of Health and Social Care, compared to total revenue of GBP133.7 million in 2021.

Gordon Sanghera, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

"Oxford Nanopore continues to demonstrate strength and resilience with strong core revenues driven by growth across all customer groups in 2022. This reflects an increase in global demand for our DNA/RNA sequencing technology across many areas of scientific research. Our latest technology improvements have propelled this growth, enabling our customers to generate highly accurate, high-yield, information-rich data, in real time and from any length fragments of DNA/RNA, from short to ultra-long.

"The 2022 launch of the high-yield, highly accessible palm-sized PromethION 2 (P2) Solo device was well received and is further expanding our growing PromethION(2) user base. This launch coupled with our Q20+ chemistry continues to establish Nanopore as a highly accessible, accurate, information rich platform at any scale.

"With a single high-performance technology for all users' sequencing needs, we enter 2023 with good momentum as we continue to invest in our operational expansion alongside our innovation."

Notice of results

The Group is planning to report annual results for the year ended 31 December 2022 on 21 March 2023 and publish its Annual Report shortly thereafter.

[bamboo2] 16/1/2023 20:12

...Usually, there’s a hierarchy of tests. By the time you reach the most complex – which might be sending a sample to Finland to look for genes associated with epilepsy – weeks can be lost, Bloomfield says.

“It delays diagnosis and therefore potentially treatment, and it’s obviously difficult for the family and whānau [extended family] as they don’t know what’s going on with their baby.”

Which is why the Liggins Institute is importing PromethION machines to provide rapid sequencing in New Zealand...

[bamboo2] 16/1/2023 19:17

More fantastic reports reaching twitter. eg

New paper out January 15, 2023.

Long-read sequencing technologies substantially overcome the limitations of short-reads but to date have not been considered as feasible replacement at scale due to a combination of being too expensive, not scalable enough, or too error-prone. Here, we develop an efficient and scalable wet lab and computational protocol for Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) long-read sequencing that seeks to provide a genuine alternative to short-reads for large-scale genomics projects. We applied our protocol to cell lines and brain tissue samples as part of a pilot project for the NIH Center for Alzheimer's and Related Dementias (CARD). Using a single PromethION flow cell, we can detect SNPs with F1-score better than Illumina short-read sequencing. Small indel calling remains to be difficult inside homopolymers and tandem repeats, but is comparable to Illumina calls elsewhere. Further, we can discover structural variants with F1-score comparable to state-of the-art methods involving Pacific Biosciences HiFi sequencing and trio information (but at a lower cost and greater throughput). Using ONT based phasing, we can then combine and phase small and structural variants at megabase scales. Our protocol also produces highly accurate, haplotype-specific methylation calls. Overall, this makes large-scale long-read sequencing projects feasible; the protocol is currently being used to sequence thousands of brain-based genomes as a part of the NIH CARD initiative. We provide the protocol and software as open-source integrated pipelines for generating phased variant calls and assemblies.

[p1nkfish] 14/1/2023 12:09

Thank you bb2. It's looking better and will feed through to IPO too in time.
Reminder of significant investor dates is always useful.

[bamboo2] 14/1/2023 11:18

Knock out performance from the recent Flowcell and chemistry upgrades continues to be reported by Scientists and other customers on Twitter, eg

Luke Blagdon Snell@lukebsnell

Have to see it to believe it. @nanopore R10 flow cells, v14 kit chemistry, SUP basecalling, duplex reads. Median quality score= 30. Significant number Q>40. Seq game changed...

...Ecstatic! We are going to move all bacterial isolate sequencing over to this strategy next week. Now a firm believer in this...

==============================

Oscar Gonzalez-Recio @OscarGenomics
Impressive performance of duplex basecalling from @nanopore
KIT14 and R10.4.1 with accuracy mode of 99.96% and median of 99.3%. #developeraccess

This is a new era.

[bamboo2] 14/1/2023 11:13

Full year results and update this Tuesday.

For info, this was the outlook from 13 September 2022

Guidance

Trading year to date is in line with expectations and we continue to expect full year 2022 LSRT revenue to be in the range of GBP145 million to GBP160 million.

Full year 2022 LSRT revenue guidance accounts for an expected tapering of COVID-19 sequencing revenue in the second half of 2022 and expected EGP revenue of GBP15 million to GBP20 million, lower than previously anticipated. Full year 2022 revenue reflects the continued growth and diversification of the broader user base.

Over the medium term, we continue to anticipate revenue growth at a compound annual growth rate of more than 30% and gross margins greater than 65%.

In the shorter term, we remain vigilant regarding the current macroeconomic environment. For full year 2023 we continue to expect LSRT revenue to be in the range of GBP190 million to GBP220 million. Our full year 2023 gross margin target of greater than 60% also remains unchanged.

The Company is in a strong financial position, with GBP602.6 million of cash and cash equivalents and treasury deposits at 30 June 2022. We are still targeting a breakeven adjusted EBITDA by 2026.

[bamboo2] 14/1/2023 11:11

Key Financial dates for 2023 added to header a few days ago.

17 January 2023
Full year 2022 trading update

21 March 2023
Full year results for the year ended 31 December 2022

12 June 2023
Annual General Meeting

July 2023
Half year 2023 trading update

6 September 2023
Half year results for the six months ended 30 June 2023

[bamboo2] 13/1/2023 07:43

Following the above Nature article, a Gordon Sanghera/Clive Brown interview

When scientists want to know about genes, chances are they use instruments called sequencers. Some of them can generate long-reads, which helps with analysing genomes. The method of the year according to Nature Methods is: long read-sequencing. For a story I chatted with scientists at companies and in academia about long-read sequencing and did some podcasts, too. This episode is with Dr. Gordon Sanghera, CEO of Oxford Nanopore Technologies.

[bamboo2] 12/1/2023 19:56

Method of the Year 2022: Long-read sequencing

ONT feature prominently in the article and seem to come out on top!

====================================================






To the delight of scientists across the life sciences, reads, which are the output of sequencing instruments, have been getting longer. Reads might be sequenced DNA or RNA and could one day routinely be entire genomes, transcriptomes and epigenomes at high throughput and accuracy, and maybe even the amino acid sequences of proteins.


Academics have happy tales about how long-read technologies have empowered their genomics projects. A few companies have facilitated this journey, notably Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) and Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT). Of late, other firms presenting long-read approaches include Element Biosciences, Illumina and MGI. Ultima Genomics and others have plans in this area.

Long reads have buoyed numerous findings in individual labs. In larger ventures, among the celebrated achievements are those in the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP) and the Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium (T2T)1. A set of papers and news features related to the T2T Consortium can be found as a Nature Collection online. During the T2T project, says Adam Phillippy, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) who co-leads the T2T Consortium, the longest read he and his colleagues handled had one million base pairs. Long-read sequencing is being used by the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium (HPRC)2,3,4. The HPRC teams want to assemble the human genome at the T2T level of completion and capture a “better spectrum of humanity in terms of how they represent allelic diversity,” says University of California Santa Cruz researcher Karen Miga, who co-leads the T2T Consortium with Phillippy and is part of the HPRC.

Population-level data from diverse populations are needed, says Heidi Rehm, who, among other appointments, is the chief genomics officer at Massachusetts General Hospital’s department of medicine and medical director of the clinical research sequencing platform at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She and her colleagues have found instances in which Black people received information about risk of a heart condition without sufficient evidence on genetic variants to support it5. Population data had been lacking about these variants, and such data are still limited, says Rehm.

One population- and diversity-focused project underway involves 500 individuals: 50 from each of 10 different Australian Indigenous communities. Samples are taken with consent from and with involvement of these communities. From these individuals’ data, one genome that represents each Indigenous community will be assembled telomere to telomere. The scientists apply whole-genome sequencing with long reads from PacBio and ONT sequencers and Illumina short-read technology. “The jury is still out on what is the best technology for telomere-to-telomere sequencing,” says Hardip Patel from the National Centre for Indigenous Genomics at Australian National University, who co-coordinates the project with Ira Deveson at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. Sequencing technology itself is rapidly changing. In 2023, the scientists will revisit their technology choices, says Patel. Technology choices have shaped long-read achievements to date and color the wish lists for the future of long-read sequencing...continues

Use link to read whole article.

[bamboo2] 06/1/2023 16:53

Scrutable, There is a substantial amount of other info out there.

I can recommend a regular twitter search on 'nanopore' as this will give you an overview of the situation with ONT as it changes on a daily basis. I normally will highlight anything useful and not too technical on this BB, although I have reduced the amount I post as I try to keep it relevant to the investing community. The jargon will sink in eventually, and much of the biological detail is not vital to know from an investing pov.

Simon Barnett [Ark] on twitter is worth following, and recently produced this article...



This provides additional info about the three main sequencers, and where ONT fits into the bigger picture.

[scrutable] 06/1/2023 10:47

bamboo

That was extremely helpful but intellectually challenging. I am going to need to listen several times before I fully understand. It's really complex. Even the speakers had difficulty explaining. Between the many umms and ahs the recorded discussion seems to contain all the answers to my question.

I can't thank you enough.

[bamboo2] 05/1/2023 19:49

Why Ark Invest is so bullish on these Genomic Stocks w/ Simon Barnett.



Scrutable, there is some good info here. Look at the chapter headings, if you don't want to watch the whole thing!

[scrutable] 05/1/2023 15:22

I have just doubled my modest stake. I am a great fan of this UK share but what are the disadvantages of ONT's system? They must be pretty glaring. ILMN still retains 22x ONT'S revenue. Surely this means a huge upside to come quickly....?

It must be more than just first mover advantage that keeps Illumina so far ahead in revenue..

[bamboo2] 04/1/2023 12:38

Also you can sequence anything that has lived, assuming you can extract a viable sample of DNA.

[p1nkfish] 04/1/2023 06:53

Anything living.

[csalvage] 04/1/2023 00:19

Just posted text from an orchid site I didn't know they used nanopore on orchids.

[csalvage] 04/1/2023 00:16

Michaela's first draft assembly of the Phragmipedium kovachii genome is complete! Almost 5 billion bases long. The assembly includes the worst "hairball" of repetitive DNA I've ever seen! We need more Nanopore reads, then we'll try to assemble again :) The final pic shows DNA fragments with hits to the Phrag. kovachii chloroplast genome

[p1nkfish] 31/12/2022 13:09

Good CBE news for Gordon Sanghera.

If we want decent public services going forward, supported by leading innovative UK PLCs growing the economy, we need more like him.

Very deserved.

If either major party doesn't encourage and promote the likes of Gordon Sanghera we will become poorer across the board at all levels of society.

[kooba] 31/12/2022 12:23

CongratsFounder and chief executive of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, Gordon Sanghera, has also been awarded an OBE for his services to the technology sector.

[bamboo2] 31/12/2022 12:21

Amongst others, I follow both Topol and Birney on Twitter, as they regularly have useful insights that either directly or indirectly affect ONT.

ONT's involvement in the new project is currently on cancer, although I believe that the recent improvements in accuracy have meant that there are now some jobs where users are comparing ILMN side by side with ONT, and using both sets of results.

=============================

Congratulations to Gordon Sanghera [CEO] who is now CBE for services to the Technology Sector.

=============================

"...Here are my 3 sequencing market predictions for 2023:...

And finally, Oxford Nanopore (ONT) started to get some momentum last year and could emerge as a contender in the clinical and research markets.

Their dual head pores appear to be breaking past Q20, and a recent post on Twitter showed their latest chemistry achieved an almost 90% duplex rate (where complementary strands are read sequentially allowing for read error correction).

The combination of the improved duplex rate and the dual heads could make for an interesting battle in the long-read space so long as ONT's previous issues with run-to-run consistency have been fixed. Q30 average reads that extend many multiples of kilobases beyond that of PacBio could be very attractive.

Prediction 3: Someone at Roche will tell me for the 6th year in a row that we'll hear something about Genia nanopores by the end of the year.

Maybe they should just try to buy ONT..."

[p1nkfish] 31/12/2022 12:11

Thanks for highlighting Genomic too bb2.

IP Group - just hope they extract maximal value and change their habits for the better.

[bamboo2] 31/12/2022 11:27

p1nk, Thank you for the FT article. Interesting that it mentions IPGroup constituent Genomics plc, as partnering with 'Our Future Health'.

"An Oxford-based company, Genomics plc, is partnering with Our Future Health to make sense of its data. It will help generate “polygenic risk scores”, which specify every participant’s risk of developing a wide range of common diseases on the basis of their genetic profile. When the risk is high, individuals and their doctors can then take preventive measures — through behaviour change or medication — to reduce it.

“We will be working with Our Future Health to find the best way to communicate risk scores back to individuals and their doctors — and integrate them into current practice,” said Peter Donnelly, chief executive of Genomics plc. “We are aiming for personalised prevention to become routine in the health service in five or 10 years’ time.”

If you want to read the whole article, and are not registered, search the headline, "UK to embark on groundbreaking new genomics projects" on google, to get past the paywall.

[p1nkfish] 31/12/2022 10:46

Will January bring a balance shift in buys vs sells post US tax loss selling deadline?
In a couple of years Ox Nano will be in the frame as an acquisition target.

It needs to be able to see off any threat to stay independent and it needs a higher valuation to help do that and keep IP firmly in the UK.

[p1nkfish] 31/12/2022 10:30

Yes.
This important too.
Ox Nano, if Gov has any sense, should be a big beneficiary and help keep development in the UK.