I was on the call this morning.Just before the questions started...

I was on the call this morning.

Just before the questions started BB said "I would like to address the elephant in the room.." referring to the fact that they missed their stated deadline of securing a sale.

He admitted that by taking APAS to market they have "learned a lot" in what it takes to take something to market and the "sales process" required. The "sales process" involves placing an instrument with the customer to "confirm clinical utility" and "define the workflow" specifically for each lab. Presumably, once the sales start flowing these placements might not be as required.

He was specifically asked by PAC Partners if they were willing to stick to the 5 sales by the end of calendar 2018 and he said they were.

As we suspected a distributor is not willing to put their name to it until they are certain of the clinical utility and met customer need. i.e. they want to be sure they are backing a winner. No surprise there. Such a distributor agreement is a catalyst for drive market penetration as alluded to in New Zealand slide about the 500 global sales of MALDI-TOF distributed by the Mérieux crowd.

To date APAS has been placed at:

1. St Vincents: (presumably) a potential customer and "development partner". They are apparently not using the device for their BAU plate processing.
2. Dr Labor in Cologne, Germany
3. A mysterious 2nd Australian Lab that BB would not name as he didn't want to "damage the relationship" and LBT were "workng through a process" with them. This Lab sounded very keen.

BB said LBT were exploring opportunities other labs in Australia as the distributor of APAS in the Australia / NZ market.

FDA clearance for the US 510s (?) was an "application process" only given the "hard work" already done to get the de-neuvo approval back in 2016. LBT apparently now "understands what FDA are looking for" having worked with FDA for "10 months" in 2016 and expects to complete preparing dossier of information FDA requires by the end of calendar 2018.

That's all I can remember at the moment.