If history is any guide and the company closes as many contracts in the next 3 quarters as it did in the past couple of years, we could be seeing contracted revenue of $80 million for the full year. And I’m not even taking into account that there’s another massive phase III trial out there waiting to get going.

The only downside of the increasing backlog is the fact that 70% of it is related to Alzheimer’s Disease. I would like to see a little more diversification, but this was to be expected following the approval of Aduhelm (formerly known as Aducanumab).

Speaking of Aduhelm, it turns out that Aduhelm has been somewhat of a flop so far, having sold just $300.000 in the quarter versus the estimated $12 million (!). Maybe the $56K price point per unit isn’t appealing to most people?

I hope that doesn’t mean that we’ll be seeing less money coming into the industry. I don’t think so. At least Cogstate’s management has been saying the exact opposite – the industry is seeing big inflows of cash to be spent on R&D. 

That’s also one of the reasons why investing in Cogstate is a much better bet than investing in Biogen (or any other pharma company). Cogstate supplies the bullets. It should come out victorious regardless of who wins the war. Let me pause right there. 

I am actually not certain of how Eisai’s competitors are looking at using a test (Cognigram) that is co-owned by one of its competitors (Eisai) so there might be some issues with that. Eli Lily has been working with Cogstate for many years in the clinical trials segment. Once is gets Donanemab approved, will it be signing a contract with Eisai to use Cognigram? I don’t know.

For now, we can rejoice with the fact that the launch of Cognigram in the US and Asia is imminent. We should be hearing about it in the current quarter.

To conclude, everything is going according to plan and Cogstate will be kept in the Portfolio.