Point of care diagnostics company EKF Diagnostics (EKF:AIM) said in a trading update Friday that it expected record trading in October based on orders received, underpining a ‘significantly improved’ core business.
However, increased optimism wasn’t sufficient to prompt management to upgrade full-year earnings to 31 December, which remain in line with prior expectations after several upgrades over the last few months.
Analysts have already doubled their earnings per share (EPS) estimates since May 2020 to 3.25p, leaving the shares on a price to earnings (PE) ratio of 18.4 times.
Investors decided it was better to travel than arrive and marked the shares down 2.5% to 60p, after gains of 139% over the last six months.
SAFE COVID TRANSPORTATION
The company continues to see orders flow in for its sample collection device (PrimeStore MTM) which deactivates all viruses, bacteria, fungi and mycobacterium tuberculosis allowing safe sample handling and transport, greatly reducing risk of infection.
The device was invented in 2006 in preparation for a global pandemic and is the only commercially available CE-marked and FDA (Federal Drug Agency) cleared transport media and has been successfully evaluated for effective SARS-CoV-2 inactivation in a study published by Public Health England .
In the case of Covid-19 the technology can stabilise the virus for up to four weeks without the need for cold storage which means testing can take place outside of containment facilities, opening up capacity in more testing laboratories.
With the winter flu season in full swing it is noteworthy that the device can safely collect flu and Covid-19 samples in the same collection kit.
