Another week and another biotech stock is off to the races. This time it is Abingdon Health (LSE:ABDX) which has seen its stock bid up from 30p to almost 70p in the space of 48 hours.
The buying of the £65m market cap stock reflects massive investor interest at the moment in biotechs which hold out the solution to some of the ongoing problems society is facing with the global pandemic.
2021 has been a horrible year for Abingdon Health
Abingdon Health listed back in December last year on AIM at 22p a share. Its stock peaked at 136p in January and it had been struggling to maintain that level as shares gradually dropped in price and investor enthusiasm waned. Stock had fallen to a low as 60% under its IPO price.Abingdon Health secured two UK government projects for rapid testing for Covid which were challenged by the Good Law Project, which questioned how the deals were arranged. This led to the company being out of pocket to the tune of more than £6m as HMG refused to pay up. This forced Abingdon Health to make dozens of redundancies at its sites in York and Doncaster.
Fast forward several months in what has been a rollercoaster year for the biotech small cap, and Abingdon Health has launched a self-testing kit which will be manufactured by BioSure. It uses a tiny drop of blood as the basis for its analysis and can deliver a result in 20 minutes.
More demand for self-testing solutions in the future
The test is designed to help individuals to monitor the level of antibodies in their blood. It could prove very useful for governments which want to monitor the immunity status of populations in the future. At the moment there is a heavy reliance on vaccine certificates, but these rule out those individuals who might have had the virus and possess a high level of immunity already.
“We are delighted that BioSure have launched their product and equally happy to be their manufacturing partner.,” said Chris Yates, CEO of Abingdon Health. “For individuals to be able to monitor their own antibody status at home is a great step in the management of Covid-19. Our own AbC-19 assay will complement this product and we expect the AbC-19 to gain additional utility in semi-quantitative format as recently announced. BioSure also distributes our AbC-19 test which is CE marked for professional use.”
Shares of Abingdon Health continue to be on an upwards run. They had hit a recent peak of 70p yesterday and are trading just below that this morning after a heady day of buying on Monday. This is a massive reversal of sentiment for the stock, which had been on a steady decline since January.
We anticipate further buying of the shares over the next few months as we receive further news on progress with the product. BioSure is an excellent partner for Abingdon Health, having carved itself a space in the testing market through its HIV technology already. It has strong links with employers who will be trying to figure out how they can bring workers back safely in the months to come.
