I ended up cashing out some annual leave to get my final fill up. Now I'm bloated (by my standard) up to 750k shares. Have added about 300k shares 1.6/1.7 last few days.
Besides the obvious, there's a reason I did it. Two actually Firstly, Lying in bed the other night bored and just clicked on that random quarterly investor call from 5 years ago. Didn't watch it just fast forwarded through as all I wanted to do was see what its like at the end when investors call in and ask questions.
That' s where by chance Brent name dropped Hilmar Wisplinghoff coming from Germany spending a few days with them to understand the tech. And the name rung a bell from the recent capital raise option holder/participant list.
Labor Dr. Wisplinghoff, located in Cologne Germany is one of the largest independent private medical laboratories in Europe, established for over 45 years. May 31, 2023 Labor Dr. Wisplinghoff and LabConnect announced the start of their strategic alliance to provide high quality and tailormade central laboratory services in Europe to support clinical trials around the world. Professor Hilmar Wisplinghoff added, "In bringing together one of the largest medical laboratories in Europe and one of the world's leading providers of Central Laboratory Services, I am convinced that we will be able to further improve our contribution to healthcare and ultimately to the patients".
Now Labor Dr. Wisplinghoff was only meant to be a relationship to help LBT with the technology and help with their go-to-market ambitions. A collaboration of sorts. However clearly the individuals Hilmar and Fabian Wisplinghoff have been so impressed with the technology and the opportunity to individually invest that they have together taken 34m shares and I highly doubt they will profit-take the options- more likely will be converted which would give them a top 10 holding, if it hasn't occurred already.
Nothing motivates more than self-interest, and their connections would be extensive with large pharmaceutical companies and individuals in Europe. With Labconnect partnership based in US, there would be now a US connection also. If LBT technology was compelling enough for the Wisplinghoff's to load up, then its compelling to me to do the same.
Secondly, and these details of the Astra Zeneca deal were only released on the investor call yesterday, under the agreement their is no annual license fee given they paid it up front with the R&D funding.
This is significant for a few reasons. To me this suggests after this initial order that a standardization roll-out of a further 20 units+ to the remainder of their manufacturing facilities (standardization by definition) is almost a certainty, Why? Because they only pay the up-front cost of the unit and that's it (I assume the deal will remain the same on subsequent orders). Remember LBTs revenue model comprise of initial capex and ongoing licensing fees. So now its kind of been revealed what was really in it for Astra Zeneca partnering up with LBT apart from obvious operational benefits. By being a first adopter and contributing to all the tweaking and integration of analysis modules with the much needed R&D funding in a top 10 pharma manufacturing facility setting, they got the license fee waived. And with a global rollout that $1.1m R&D funding will look very cheap after a few years of no license fees. However in return LBT got the knowledge of exactly what a top 10 pharma drug manufacturing needed to validate the technology and offer compelling solution, and a key partner to drive commercialization ambitions with other global pharmaceutical companies.
Put simply LBTs commercial success is now very much in Astra Zeneca's interest.
LBT Price at posting:
1.6¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)