Avricore's Healthtab UK Pivot
Roaring back from the dead or setting up for disappointment?
Note: Avricore is a tiny illiquid stock and a speculative investment at best at this point. This is certainly not intended as any kind of advice, but merely my current thoughts and a way for me to write out my ideas.
This Again?
For those of you following along, Avricore (AVCR on the TSX-V) has been a painfully bad investment for me (I was wrong about the fundamental thesis) but an amazing investing lesson as well. I’ve been following along with their pivot plans to forget about growing in Canada and turn their focus towards partnering with neighborhood pharmacies in the UK, starting with a pilot program in North East London.
Before we go further, a disclaimer: I still own some stock in AVCR, so keep that in mind and know I’m likely to be biased.
To catch you up on the story:
Healthtab is their point of care rapid testing product. They deploy Abott equipment (the hardware) and integrate their software (Healthtab) as a turnkey POCT (Point of Care Testing) offering to end customers, mainly pharmacies. This is relatively new ground for most western ways of conducting medical care, namely its mostly preventive/diagnostic but also its meant to be done via a pharmacist, not a doctor/nurse.
Shoppers (and Loblaws, who owns Shoppers Drug Mart - aka SDM) were far and away the biggest customer. Initial growth looked amazing, up to several hundred pharmacies were technically offering the service in several provinces. Alas, there was no real push for the service and governments in Canada being provincial in terms of who controls medical regulations meant very slow progress. Shoppers gave up on the MSA and moved on. Rexall remains a small client in Canada in very limited numbers, say a handful, not meaningful.
The company pivoted to UK where they were able to get in with a pilot program in north central London as the UK gov looks to improve access and service to focus on prevention care to a badly managed healthcare system.
The (now-former) CEO was fired.
The CTO was appointed CEO, likely to be an interim measure. He appears to be leading the UK pivot and expansion.
Recently announced growth in the pilot to an additional 70 pharmacies in the
