Corporate News

Omega (AIM: ODX), the medical diagnostics company focused on CD4, infectious diseases and food intolerance, announces that a UK Public Sector contract disclosure has been published yesterday in relation to Omega’s contract with the Department of Health and Social Care ("DHSC") to provide manufacturing capacity for COVID-19 lateral flow antigen test, announced on 11 February 2021 (RNS: 6952O).

The disclosure can be seen here: 

https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/005133-2021?origin=SearchResults&p=1 

Omega notes that in this public government disclosure the contract is stated to have an estimated total value of £374 million. The Company notes that under UK Government Public Sector contract disclosure rules this number necessarily represents a maximum of the potential value of the contract and care should be taken not to use this number as an estimate or forecast of the actual likely value of purchase orders to be received by the Company for the production of COVID-19 lateral flow antigen tests. The value of future purchase orders may be substantially less than stated in yesterday’s public Government disclosure.  

In addition, the Company still awaits confirmation that a COVID-19 lateral flow antigen test has passed the necessary performance evaluation. Accordingly, there are no COVID-19 lateral flow antigen tests that can be manufactured by Omega, on behalf of the Government, at this time.

As soon as the DHSC has access to a test that has successfully passed performance evaluation, it will be licensed to Omega for manufacture. When the test is ready for production Omega expects to receive purchase orders from the DHSC for these tests and, where appropriate, the Company will make further statements given that these production volumes are expected to result in substantial revenue growth for new financial year.

Colin King, Chief Executive Officer of Omega, said:  

“Although the disclosed contract value for our agreement with the UK Government is only an estimate of what the total value could be worth, it is very encouraging, and is an indication of the substantial impact on Omega’s future performance that such a level of utilisation of our lateral flow test production capacity might have.

“We look forward to receiving notification of which test will be produced under this arrangement and we will update shareholders as these tests move towards production and purchase orders are received.”

Contacts:

Contacts: