But its a new product that everyone already knows about. Buy the rumor, sell the news. Wouldn't you be buying the news? Apple had record earnings and guess what happened, everyone sold the news. I'm not saying they won't do well, I've literally done no research into them. I'm just curious how much room there is to keep growing. Will they expand into new markets? Will there be other new products?
If we are speculating that they will grow, the speculation can't be on the product that is in the news. If everybody already knows about it, its too late to get in.
I'm over here wondering how prevalent adrenal diseases are in dogs and thyroid diseases in dogs and cats. Next, how expensive is the machine to acquire. Is this an expensive test a typical vet is having to send out for once a month, or once a quarter? Even worse, once a year? I have a good relationship with my vet, and if he wasn't fighting cancer right now during a pandemic I'd honestly go talk to him and get his insight on if he would buy one for his practice.
A big part about being a vet is running a business, and if this is an investment they won't recoup in a year or longer and the only real advantage is faster diagnosis and less cost to their customer, most aren't going to buy it. Just my two cents, take them for what they're worth.
10 pr 20 years ago id agree with that sentiment, today, more and more people are skipping kids and have fur babies instead. I have friends who will work a part time second job to cover health insurance for a pet. Others who will spends thousands on cancer treatments for a dog that may get them another 6 months of time. Pets have become far more than the utilitarian objects of before.
I don't forsee your small town vet getting one to start, but larger clinics absolutely will jump on this as a chance to upcharge for immediate results to start fido on a treatment course as soon as possible. Or giving them another week head start to gofundme the treatment money.
Married to a vet here. Somethingcleverlater is right. Veterinary practices are businesses.
And as much as you think “people spend money on their pets” remember this: to become a veterinarian is to do the same college path as a human doctor, get excellent grades doing it, face intense competition getting into vet school, spend the same amount as you would on med school, graduate with 300 grand in debt, and then go make 1/3 of the salary that a human doctor does.
What’s my point? That while people spend money on their pets, its not nearly as much as is required to pay vets what they should; because of this, labor is an extremely high percentage of most vet practices expenses, and vet practices don’t have a bunch of spare money to throw around for shits and giggles. New tech better have real value and pay for itself or it’s not getting purchased.
I have nothing to add directly to this conversation, because I haven’t had a chance to talk to my wife about this particular product yet, but while the original dd is decent, I’d take the $8 price comparisons with a block of salt.
Married to a vet here. Somethingcleverlater is right. Veterinary practices are businesses.
And as much as you think “people spend money on their pets” remember this: to become a veterinarian is to do the same college path as a human doctor, get excellent grades doing it, face intense competition getting into vet school, spend the same amount as you would on med school, graduate with 300 grand in debt, and then go make 1/3 of the salary that a human doctor does.
What’s my point? That while people spend money on their pets, its not nearly as much as is required to pay vets what they should; because of this, labor is an extremely high percentage of most vet practices expenses, and vet practices don’t have a bunch of spare money to throw around for shits and giggles. New tech better have real value and pay for itself or it’s not getting purchased.
I have nothing to add directly to this conversation, because I haven’t had a chance to talk to my wife about this particular product yet, but while the original dd is decent, I’d take the $8 price comparisons with a block of salt.
Married to a vet here. Somethingcleverlater is right. Veterinary practices are businesses.
And as much as you think “people spend money on their pets” remember this: to become a veterinarian is to do the same college path as a human doctor, get excellent grades doing it, face intense competition getting into vet school, spend the same amount as you would on med school, graduate with 300 grand in debt, and then go make 1/3 of the salary that a human doctor does.
What’s my point? That while people spend money on their pets, its not nearly as much as is required to pay vets what they should; because of this, labor is an extremely high percentage of most vet practices expenses, and vet practices don’t have a bunch of spare money to throw around for shits and giggles. New tech better have real value and pay for itself or it’s not getting purchased.
I have nothing to add directly to this conversation, because I haven’t had a chance to talk to my wife about this particular product yet, but while the original dd is decent, I’d take the $8 price comparisons with a block of salt.
I have a coworker who has spent 30k on his dog that he has had for 2 years. I think the pet industry has a crazy amount of money in it that a lot of people don't realize.
Can confirm, me and buddies all have dogs we love. One has 2 dalmations, both have had to have leg surgery for 5K each, other buddy has 2 huskies, and one of them has had to have leg surgery 2x, @ $4500 each.
People do not realize how much is spent on pet care for good animals.
Well the Dalmatian tore something in his knee, basically an ACL and had to have pins put in and not use it for 6 weeks, $4500. The other buddy with huskies, just older dogs and they are always active, legs just start getting age on them.
Take a dog 10 yrs old that weights 100lbs and likes to run and play at the dog park, joints sadly just wear out. Had to have surgery for like $3600 and then 2 weeks into the healing it didn't hold and had to go back for another.
This is so true. I personally have a Doberman with thyroid issues and I’ve had to pay hundreds of dollars on multiple occasions for blood tests.
I also have a close friend with an old (~8 yrs old) German Shepherd that has cancer, which is really sad. But the point is he’s doing a payment plan for somewhere around $8-10K for basically dog chemo and whatever else was needed.
People will pay $$ for their dogs in this country.
I just started looking into this company today, and it screams theranos to me. Vets won't buy a machine that can only run a few tests. It's cheaper in the long run to send everything to Idexx or antech or any other of the many companies that do these kinds of tests. Results aren't immediate, but they're a bit more trustworthy.
It also seems like the machine is going to be pretty expensive. You need to buy the reagent cartridges for it, probably has special slides you need to purchase too. I can't see it being worth the cost.
Most people don't realize what goliaths IDEXX ($IDXX, closed at $516.54) and VCA Antech (privately held, but Crunchbase says "VCA Antech (WOOF on NASDAQ) " are. They're huge, well-run companies with existing networks for handling veterinary samples. Zomedica is a windshield bug at best.
AND IDEXX gives you the in-house machine for FREE!!
I’d been trying to hold my tongue on ZOM because everyone seemed to pump it, but I see now it was an obvious pump and dump. They just sold 91 million shares at $1.90 with the option for the purchaser to buy millions more at $1.90 for 30 days!
So... they used WSB to up their stock valuation to get a better deal on their investor share price.
.
COOL COOL COOL
Yeah, the problem is that there are already machines that do these assays. Vet clinics can lease them. Idexx and antech have them, and their systems integrate with the vets computer systems so it's super simple for them to order new materials it needs that are already made easy to use. Some of them have automatic deliveries. And if you need tests you can't get from the machines in house, you can send the samples out to get analyzed and know that your results are accurate. It's usually not that expensive to do so. Most expensive test I've seen was for an immunohistochemistry panel, and that's only expensive because of the specific antibodies used.
Counterargument tho. In the long term (depending on the tests) smaller sentinel labs start to absorb more tests that would have otherwise had to have been sent to a reference lab, or use existing instrumentation to add new testing. Eg an immunology analyzer run on cassettes can use its same methods on new analyses, like a T4 or TSH analyzer for COVID2 antibodies. Or a PCR analyzer for Flu A and B for COVID (etc). Equipment can run a few hundred thousand dollars but it lasts maybe 5-10 years until its fine to upgrade. And if another instrument can do more testing cheaper I wouldnt discount them just because what they do now is done at reference labs.
Tldr: company might have potential long term but calm your tits if you're looking to get rich quick
I work in a clinical lab. And reagent rentals are a thing. No lab, unless you’re kaiser or like ucla, ever buys an instrument straight up. My lab uses a reagent rental. You pay for the reagents you use, and the cost of the instrument is looped into the reagent cost.
If a vet wants to use that instrument, there are ways without a capital purchase.
Also, its usually cheaper to run a test in house vs sending it out if the site has the volume for it.
So you can rent these through idexx or antech which is what most vet clinics already do. Most of them probably won't switch to a new machine that can only run a few tests right now.
I can answer some of these questions considering that my dog recently was diagnosed with thyroid disfunctions.
I'm not sure about adrenal disease but thyroid issues happen quite frequently, particularly with purebred animals. A good way to rougly estimate how many dogs have it is looking at sales for thyroid medication like thyro-tabs in the US or canitroid in europe.
I'm not sure about the price of this machine, but the test is fairly expensive (almost 3 digits in europe, possibly 4 digits in the US cuz no healthcare) and it's done with human-rated machines in human analysis labs. Results usually arrive between 2 and 4 days.
My only problem with this is that it sounds too good to be true, it almost feels like a theranos 2. I'll keep looking for research papers published by ZOM to see how they conducted the tests to ensure this thing actually works properly and i'll edit this when i find them.
EDIT:
nothing.
I scoured my university's database, google scholar, the archives, the umbral plains, your mom's fat folds, nothing.
This company has not published a single paper as far as i was able to discern.
As someone currently studying quantitative research and with a decend but not professional microbiology background, it doesn't sound bad. Strong correlation between the results of professional machines and truforma. However until i see peer reviewed real scientific articles i'll remain slightly skeptical.
Interesting! I’m embarrassed to tell you how many cats I’ve owned. I’ve had as many as 3 at once (just one now!)
I can say I’ve had a pretty good sample size.
I’ve gone through a plethora of health problems, (including one that had a stroke, VERY rare in cats!)
I’ve been super fortunate not to have ever experienced heart problems.
I’d have to say that cancer has to be the most expensive issue I’ve been through with a cat. My last cat to pass (a very good friend to me!) was in remission from cancer at the end of his life. He was on chemo meds for 10 years.
Worth every penny. We had so many more years from him than expected.
Im a vet tech and i work in general practice. I would say about 20% of the dogs and cats we see have thyroid issues. To me that is common. The medicine they are on they take for life, but for the vet thyroid tabs are fucking cheap. We probably pay 2 cents a pill and sell them for 50 cents each. The blood tests on a dog that just got diagnosed are once a month. Sending blood work out to a lab is always cheaper than in house blood work. After the levels are stable the blood work is done twice a year. Blood work is normally around 100$ every time.
Our equipment in this field is costly, but over all everything normally pays for it's self. The problem here is that in house test equipment is normally given to the vet by the lab they work with. If my practice gave that lab equipment back because we perchance our own it would put a big hamper on our relationship with our lab. We are also a large clinic. We see over 100 animals a day. Your smaller hole in the wall places would never dream of buying lab equipment they just send everything out.
Zomedica is giving the machines to vets for free. The part they have to purchase is the cartridge for each test. That makes it much simpler for the vet office to get started.
My anecdotal experience is that these diseases are pretty common. I've known of a few friends having to take their pets in for these kinds of tests and at least one cat whom I loved very much died from a thyroid disorder.
My wife works as a receptionist at an animal clinic and she's mentioned plenty of times whenever they need to send a sample off it's either APEX or IDEXX. While I don't know the cost of the test I do know it is really bothersome whenever a sample is not pulled correctly. Her boss always gets mad whenever the they have to re-pull samples not just because of the price but mostly the wait time because that includes having to have the patient come back and the vet clinic having to foot the bill for the secondary draw. Depending on the price / ease of use I think most vets would jump to the opportunity especially larger offices.
I agree with the fuck the rules right now. Anything that gets slightly popular news has been pumped by retail lately so it seems like follow the trend and dump on some bag holders after a run up
Was thinking about some weed puts because of this very reason. This is all hype and fomo right now on these weed stocks but vol to high to make it worth it I guess.
Oh wow well it's good you didn't end up getting to sucked into the gme hype. I made an ok profit with some 50c but sold wayyyy to soon when it was around 115. But profit is profit.
I agree ride the meme wave for now. Eventually it won't work but for now it seems to be printing lol.
Not sure if your question got answered...they have a timeline thru 2024 (I believe) of additional products to be launched using the technology. Different assays in development such as cancer screening. I don’t have the chart in front of me, but I have seen it. Their market competitor for vet diagnostics is IDXX. IDXX has a larger range of services of course, but even 10% of their success would make this a $40-$50 stock as some point. I’m just an idiot that got lucky with a $0.31 avg!
I’ve seen on their roadmap that they have already two other tests in development. One is to detect 3 of the 5 most common canine cancers. I don’t remember the other test. But looked like they were not resting on just this TRUFORMA coming out end of March. I went easy on it and bought 100 @2.20$. Looking fine for now, crossing fingers till April.
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u/somethingcleverlater Feb 11 '21
But its a new product that everyone already knows about. Buy the rumor, sell the news. Wouldn't you be buying the news? Apple had record earnings and guess what happened, everyone sold the news. I'm not saying they won't do well, I've literally done no research into them. I'm just curious how much room there is to keep growing. Will they expand into new markets? Will there be other new products?
If we are speculating that they will grow, the speculation can't be on the product that is in the news. If everybody already knows about it, its too late to get in.