Advanced Oncotherapy Plc (LON:AVO) Chief Executive Officer Sanjeev Pandya caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the second commercial sale of their LIGHT proton therapy system, framework agreements and future plans for the company
Q1: An announcement out today, could you tell us about that?
A1: The announcement is for a second commercial sale of our LIGHT proton therapy system in to China. The sale is to the China-Japan Union Hospital, it’s actually one of the largest hospitals in North-East China with over 3,300 beds and it’s located in the province called Julin Province in the city of Changchun. The actual purchase order is worth between $$75-80 million, the final price tag will clearly depend on the configuration of the treatment rooms but it’ll relate to one single LIGHT system and a total of 5 treatment rooms in the facility. Now you’ll recall that this is actually the second commercial sale of our LIGHT system, you may recall that in March 2015, earlier this year, we progressed with a sale to a hospital in Huai’an City in Jiangsu province and that’s in East China so this is really a second commercial sale of our LIGHT system into China.
Q2: These framework agreements, what do they mean?
A2: The framework agreements I’d like to stress are not formal contracts but we’d hoped, to further discussion, that these framework agreements can be turned into full contracts. It’s very much similar to the way Changchun process initially started out with the framework agreement and then we we’re about to progress this to a full contract after further discussions with Sinophi, our partner, and staff and management of the hospital in Changchun. Fortunately, for us today, it actually coincides with the UK’s state visit of China’s president His Excellency Mr Xi Jinping and Sinophi have actually announced that we’ll be progressing a further four framework agreements and we’re signing that later on today for the total cost of project including the clinics of £800 million. We hope that we’ll continue our discussions with our partners Sinophi and these various hospitals and progress these also to full formal contracts and purchase agreements.
Q3: So what’s next for Advanced Oncotherapy Plc?
A3: I think there’s lots going on in the company but maybe we can focus on China and South-East Asia and following the news today, I think the whole market is incredibly exciting there, it’s growing and the opportunity for treating cancer is simply vast, roughly over 20% of the world’s newly-diagnosed cancer cases are coming from China so I really believe this market represents a very sizable and huge opportunity for us.
