Palintest launches Molendotech water test
Frontier IP, the capital efficient IP commercialisation company, has announced that Palintest, a subsidiary of Halma plc, has now launched its water testing kit that was developed by portfolio company Molendotech.
◼ The kit is called Siren BW and is targeted for the bathing water market. The novel tests can rapidly identify the concentration of faecal bacteria in water in less than 30 minutes which provides substantial commercial advantages (cost and time) over the current process of sending samples off to a lab and waiting for bacteria to multiply in a petri dish. The kit is initially available in the UK and Ireland with roll out to continental Europe and the USA planned. The technology has a wide range of other uses including potable water and food and beverage production.
◼ Molendotech was incorporated less than a year ago and uses technology developed by Professor Simon Jackson at the University of Plymouth. We believe this rapid commercialisation demonstrates the value of the unique Frontier IP commercialisation model both in terms of the ability of the Frontier IP team to identify IP and successfully provide commercialisation services to the IP creators, but also that there is almost certainly other Molendotech type technologies in Frontier IP Group that are yet to be incorporated. This supports our view that the portfolio valuation is a hugely lagging indicator for Fronter IP.
◼ The current value of Molendotech is now likely to be significantly greater than the value set at its recent fund raise as well as our recent estimate: In February 2018 a £0.5m fund raise set a valuation for Molendotech of £1.25m (Frontier IP’s 14% shareholding worth £0.175m in its books) and our most recent estimate is £3.1m. However, further to this, with the first product now launched and with significant global potential across multiple markets, it is clear the company is set to grow fast and will generate significant further value for Frontier IP in the coming years.