Reflected glory: Brisbane tech firm’s shares rocket on links to Ellume’s COVID deal
Shares in a little-known Brisbane tech stock jumped as much as 70 per cent today after it revealed its close links to Ellume and the $300 million COVID-19 test kit contract it won from the US Government.
Brisbane firm Anteotech has revealed close links to Ellume (Photo: ABC)
Anteotech had been dealing with its own issues before the Ellume announcement. It has its own rapid test kit for COVID-19 but can’t find enough people in Australia with the virus for the clinical trials and has been forced to India where there are more than 8000 cases a day.
But the company also revealed that Ellume uses some of Anteotech’s technology, namely a product called AnteoBind, which is a “quantum dot diagnostic platform”.
That sent investors racing into the junior stock which had been trading at 1 cent or below up until the January. It jumped as high as 11 cents this morning with 56 million shares traded. It was its highest price since 2014.
But it was purely speculators jumping in trying to get exposure to the Ellume deal. AnteoTech even admitted the Ellume contract with the US Government would not change anything significantly, but the two companies have close ties. Ellume was an original “seed customer” of AnteoTech’s product.
The jump follows years of poor share price performance, an issue its managing director Derek Thompson was brought in to address. The company also has its own battery technology.
Thomson said AnteoTech has a supply contract with Ellume that ended later this year. He said the US Government deal would not trigger any immediate change to supply.
“We have been working with Ellume closely in recent months to ensure we are able to supply required volumes of AnteoBind and we are confident we have the capacity to fulfill requirements,” Thomson said.
There was an expectation of a modest increase in demand from Ellume until the end of this year.
“Forecast volume requirements of AnteoBind for periods beyond this date have not been received from Ellume. We will update the markets of any significant changes to the AnteoTech business as a result of Ellume’s success as they occur.
The share price leap will revive speculation of an Ellume ASX listing. The company raised $5 million at an initial public offering in 2019 at which point it said a listing was not far off.
Ellume founder and chief executive Sean Parsons said at the time: “We want to have access to capital to be able to grow the company aggressively.”
