Ann: Presentation - Pitt Street Research Life Sciences Conference, page-12

Epichem?

Solid medium business with clients in 35 plus countries. It's a niche business in a very highly fragmented and competitive market. It tends to grow in jumps, then hit physical limits since it's based around the work of highly credentialed chemists. Each expansion of facilities, counted in fumehoods is costly, but it eventually pays for itself. So even though it may experience fast growth for a year or two, it then hits its limits before the next costly investment. Mind you much of this expansion has occurred under a relatively high AUD and the weaker AUD will help it, but I don't expect any miracles from it in the short term. They tell us it's now paying a profit, and the debt for the last expansion has already been paid, and it has made a noticeable dent in the company's costs since last year.

Strategically, having Epichem and Pitney in Sydney where MPL is being developed under the same umbrella company makes sense. Epichem's skills have already been used to create an analog of the the MPL molecule which we are told is six times more potent, but that's got a long way to go, however it shows you how that may contribute to PAAs drug development program, which really is its main game.