Shares in food intolerance and infectious disease diagnostics company Omega Diagnostics (ODX:AIM) gained 6% to 49.25p after signalling early signs of a second half recovery.
TRACTION IN CHINA
Omega received approval in November from the Chinese regulator for its self-testing food intolerance product Food Detective, and encouragingly the company noted a 12% increase in sales during October and November compared with last year.
Its Chinese partner, which has invested around $2 million to date and deploys a dedicated marketing team of more than 20, has estimated potential sales of 1 million tests in 2023. The tests are sold for around $15.5 per test.
Broker FinnCap noted that this implies sales of around £12 million, capturing a high gross margin of between 60%-to-70%.
The company is looking to increase penetration of the significant US market by adding more distribution partners.
COVID-19 Testing
Omega is a key supplier to the government’s Rapid Test Consortium and continued to make progress to ‘significantly increase’ lateral flow testing kit capacity to 500,000 a week by the end of December 2020, and two million per week by the end of April 2021.
FinnCap noted that if fully utilised this would generate revenues in excess of £200 million.
AFFORDABLE HIV TESTING
Omega provides the only instrument-free self-testing HIV point of care product, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) pre-qualified in July 2020 and has the potential to supply four-to-six million tests over the next three-to-four years.
Today’s interim results were in line with the 28 October trading update and reflected the impact of the pandemic with revenues down 29% to £3.2 million producing a statutory loss of 0.28 million. The company ended the period with cash of £7 million.
