“What is coming is better than what has gone.”
Quran 93:04
My friends,
Today Tiresias would like to revisit some issues he hasn’t directly addressed for some time. First; Tiresias would remind you of what market sector Optiscan is in. Optiscan is in health technology. Optiscan is in cancer diagnosis and treatment. Is there a more important sector? Is there a sector which concerns every one of us more? Without health, there is no life. Without life and health there is nothing. In his life and long involvement in medicine Tiresias has seen the rise and rise of health in public and government consciousness. Health has become pre-eminent. This was not always the case. Of course, everyone’s health was always important to them, but it was nothing like now. It leads everything, and everything is justified and priced in terms of health. Health is the only currency that everything else is priced in. What industry is more vital? What commodity is more precious? Which billionaire would prefer another billion dollars to a cure for their cancer? All the money in the world is nothing if there is no health. As we have seen, as prosperity has increased so has concern and expenditure on health. Health is the sector, like no other, and will get bigger and bigger and bigger. It is the sector of the 21st Century, and in that sector, “The Emperor of all Maladies”, cancer trumps all else.
Second; Optiscan is finally now on the cusp of commercialisation. One of the frustrations to us the long-term shareholders have been the delays. Tiresias has alluded to previous management issues which have contributed to the delays of the promises that this Optiscan’s Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy technology. But to every cloud there is a silver lining. The delays have resulted, through no action by Optiscan management, in other technological developments which make the original laser endomicroscopy so much greater. These developments, not foreseen early in Optiscan’s history, have worked to Optiscan’s advantage. You see my friends, apart from the advances in Optiscan technology itself, the development of molecular pathology, as shown by Memorial Sloan Kettering’s PARPi-fl, has changed the playing field. PARPi-fl, just by itself, completely changes and greatly broadens the applicability of in vivo real-time pathology. And PARPi-fl is just the beginning. Every cancer and every disease have molecular markers which can be imaged in-vivo, in real time, in three dimensions. The other development of which Tiresias has talked about is Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. This too will transform pathology and enable digital real-time telepathology.
Third; financing. The money! For much of its history Opti scan has struggled with insufficient funding and less than adequate management. In the last year it has been refinanced and there have been significant changes in management. For much of its history Optiscan has been priced for failure. It has risen a little, and now Tiresias sees that it might just be priced for survival. What will result in it’s valuation rising to be priced for success. Tiresias sees that repricing for success is close. Optiscan thus far, has not had institutional support. Even a trickle of institutional money, once the potential is articulated to them, will result in an avalanche of funding and buying. Tiresias sees pathology providers and institutional funds coming in, in a trickle and then a rush. You see my friends, considering the potential applicability of CLE and these other developments, and the health sector’s pre-eminence, Tiresias sees that Optiscan is cheap. When it starts to be re-rated for success, then Tiresias will smile and allow himself an extra cup of ambrosia.
(20min delay)