Ann: Prospectus, page-3

A number of peers and competitors of Microba are named in the prospectus. It turns out that more often than not these competitors are not listed companies, suggesting that they are still early days in their corporate and business development. Anyway FWIW here are links to those that were named.

These entities also have developed microbiome test kits:

Viome Life Science - does not appear to be a public listed company. https://www.viomelifesciences.com/
Quantbiome, Inc - is a private company. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/quantbiome
Sun Genomics - appears to be yet another private company. https://flore.com/
Onegevity Health LLC - another private company https://www.onegevity.com/

It strikes me that the common link between all these companies is that every one of them are pretty much all boffins and no salesmen. It seems there a lots of very smart people all working towards a common goal but none of them to date have come up with anything with a decent quid in it. Microba seems to be the first team of this batch to take their concept to the public. So while they may not be first to market with their product they are the first to go public in raising money to market their test kits.

Microba also lists three traditional companies that dabble in this niche:

Exact Sciences Corp - market capitalisation = US$12b - https://www.exactsciences.com/
Genova Diagnostics - private company - https://www.gdx.net/
Diagnostic Solutions Lab - private company - https://www.diagnosticsolutionslab.com/leadership

Listed under Research are the following companies:

Microbiome Insights - another privateer ... fark! this is getting boring! - https://microbiomeinsights.com/
CosmosID attached to a uni ... - https://www.cosmosid.com/
Eagle Genomics - yeah nah, a pommy outfit - https://www.eaglegenomics.com/
Orasure (Diversige) - Yay!!! Orasure bought Diversige for US$12m in 2020 current MC US$498m - https://www.orasure.com/

Companies trying to develop microbiome-based therapeutics

Seres Therapeutics - another NASDAQ stock, this one with a market cap of US$558m - https://www.serestherapeutics.com/
Microbiotic - another pommy outfit, this one with private backers - https://microbiotica.com/
Second Genome - another early stage developer and still private - https://www.secondgenome.com/
Rebiotix – Ferring Pharmaceuticals - a buy out in 2018 by a big Swiss pharma for a stage III product - https://www.rebiotix.com/ferring-acquires-innovative-biotechnology-company-and-microbiome-pioneer-rebiotix-inc/ , https://www.rebiotix.com/ , https://www.ferring.com/
4D Pharma PLC - very active UK based firm with a well developed pipeline but with a market cap of 85 million pounds - https://www.4dpharmaplc.com/en

It seems to me that most of these entities are very early in their formation in terms of corporate structure and product development. Having said that it also seems to me that Microba is well back in the pack, with no obvious competitive advantage.

I have reasons for deciding to follow this company but it is not clear to me that there is much to look forward to in the short to medium term regards it. Would love to be dead wrong of course and would appreciate being told why and where I'm wrong.