WideCells Group PLC (LON:WDC) Chief Executive Officer João Andrade and Chief Financial Officer David Bridgland caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the agreement with Hemocord, the significance of the region, David becoming full time CFO, future agreements and their investor event
Q1: Now, João, you’ve secured a second definitive agreement for CellPlan which will see your ‘first of its kind’ stem cell healthcare insurance and medical concierge service offered to both new and existing clients of Hemocord Clinica Medica. Can you give us a bit more information on Hemocord and what this agreement means for Widecells?
A1: Hemocord is a cord blood bank that exists for more than 10 years, established in Southern Brazil, Brazil is one of the fastest growing markets in the cord blood banking industry and this is a high-quality facility. Over the past few months, we have been conducting the quality assessment to confirm that Hemocord meets our stringent criteria for CellPlan XL cord blood banks so that we are able to insure the families that our storing their baby’s umbilical cord blood with them. Once that has been completed, we’ve negotiated our partnerships, and it’s now very interesting to see that we are launching the product not only in the UK, as it happened last month from where we started to generate revenues for CellPlan already, but we are now moving fast into international markets including new continents as well. So, this represents the need for CellPlan in the global market and this agreement with Hemocord is really important to us to tap into the Brazilian market and bring this solution to Brazilian families.
Q2: This agreement not only creates a new revenue stream but also represents a new geography for WideCells Group, do you see this region being of particular significance?
A2: Yes, it is, because we are looking into emerging markets and emerging markets have a direct correlation to the markets that are growing more within the stem cell industry, particularly the cord blood banking industry. In Brazil, the market has been growing a lot especially in Rio de Janeiro and San Paulo, the biggest cities which combined have more than 30 million people and it’s an important geography for us, we had already entered an agreement with an existing cord blood bank based in San Paulo before where we have out licenced some of our stem cell processing and storage technology and that is already in sales since October last year. This is really an interesting geography for us, I’m Brazilian myself so I understand the market quite well so it has accelerated perhaps some of these agreements understanding how the market works so it’s really of high relevance for us to tap into not only Brazil but any of these emerging markets.
Q3: David, now that you are full time for WideCells Group, this must be a good indicator that things are going well?
A3: Absolutely, since I’ve been involved with the Group, all the way through the fundraising through to the IPO, since about a year ago when we completed the IPO, we’ve been setting up the facility up in Manchester, we’ve been developing the CellPlan product and we’ve got R&D projects started and underway. Just now, we’ve have a licence from the Human Tissue Authority about to be granted which will allow us to start the R&D research work, it will also enable us to get into further R&D programmes that we’re talking to partners about. It will also allow us to start storing stem cells up in Manchester in our stem cell processing storage facility so revenues are going to start to grow significantly for the WideCells part of the business. For CellPlan, our insurance products for stem cell treatment plan, that is going to start growing significantly as well, that was launched last month, sales are going to grow and with all areas of the business, these 3 areas of the business growing rapidly, it’s important that I’m able to focus on control of the business and maximising the profits that we’re going to be generating.
Q4: 3 million cord blood samples are held in storage in 500 cord blood storage facilities across the world, you now have agreements with 2 of these facilities, can we expect more agreements of this kind?
A4: Absolutely, we’ve been having a number of conversations with cord blood banks and we’re conducting quality assessments with a number of them and in the coming months, we’ll be announcing more cord blood banks joining up with our business.
Q5: João, finally, WideCells Group PLC have an investor event due to take place next week, is this open for anyone to attend?
A5: Yes, we have even included details on the RNS announcement this morning, it is an open event. The only thing for any investor that wants to attend just needs to send an email to the email address indicated in the RNS and they need to be identification to the building to participate in the investor event which we are very excited about.
