However, beyond the necessity to protect its intellectual property (IP) rights, Pacific Edge's share price is wallowing and investors will be instead focusing on its top line results, due for release in late May.
Following a two-year run of positive market updates on its expanding US operations and laboratory, several large US health provider contracts, and the patent applications, Pacific Edge's share price basked in the limelight. It was one of the stock exchange's best performing stocks in late 2013, based on market capitalisation gains.
However, for the past year rolling its share price is 55% down, trading around 68c yesterday, compared with its $1.56 high a year ago, and more than halving the company's market capitalisation to $216.5 million.
While Pacific Edge released three market updates, on five patents, during the three-week company reporting season, and two more were released yesterday, the share price has hardly moved.
Pacific Edge announced yesterday that Mexico and Japan had granted patent protections.
When contacted in Australia, Pacific Edge chief executive David Darling said the company's IP was its ''key asset'' and essential to commercial growth and development.
''There has been a rash of patents ... which underpins the company's commercial operations, its great science and the IP we have in the market,'' he said.
He was unable to give specific guidance on full year expectations, given lodging the report was only weeks away, but said having had ''strong'' first-half trading, he also expected ''a strong second-half report''.
On the question of revenue, Mr Darling could only say he ''understood and recognised'' how investors' would be scrutinising the full-year result.
Its first-half trading booked a tripling of revenue to $1.59 million, but a third of that was from foreign exchange and interest gains, and after a cash burn of $5.74 million, the half-year result was a $4.85 million loss.
Craigs Investment Partners broker Peter McIntyre said Pacific Edge now had to show some ''runs on the board'', and the emphasis for investors was on its revenue stream.
''They've peppered the market with [positive] announcements for almost the past two years - that's two years into their five-year plan to get to $100 million turnover,'' he said, reiterating previous company announcements.
Key for Pacific Edge's full-year result would be the extent of its revenue stream for the past year, Mr McIntyre said.
''Now's the time that cash needs to arrive,'' he said.
Mr McIntyre highlighted Pacific Edge was still well placed, retaining cash in hand of $14.7 million, at the time of the half-year result.
''[However] if Pacific Edge came back to the market looking for more cash, it wouldn't be a good sign,'' he said.
Another loss in May could see Pacific Edge nudge over the $50 million mark of consecutive losses since 2005.
Mr Darling said last month ''extending and further developing our intellectual capital is essential for the long-term commercial success of the company and the creation of additional value for shareholders''.
He said Pacific Edge had been rapidly expanding its portfolio of intellectual property, covering its diagnostic technology. Patents had been granted in the US for prognosis of melanoma, in Japan for prognosis of colorectal cancer and in China for the detection of gastric cancer.
The internationally recognised medical journal BioMed Central Urology announced yesterday it had accepted for publication Pacific Edge's science paper on the clinical performance of its recently launched bladder cancer test, Cxbladder Triage.
PATENT-RELATED ANNOUNCEMENTS
- March 18: Mexico and Japan grant patent protection on bladder and stomach cancer technologies, respectively.
- March 5: India grants patent protection for Cxbladder technology.
- Feb 24: European Patent Office, representing 38 European countries, patent protection for mainstay Cxbladder technology. Also European Patent Office protection for ''detection of gastric cancer''. Nov 26: European Intellectual Property Office awards patent for colorectal cancer prognostic technology.
- Sept 5: Japan grants patent for colorectal cancer prognostic technology.
- Sept 4: US Patent Office grants protection for ''Prognosis Prediction for Melanoma''.
EARLIER PATENTS
- Bladder cancer: NZ, Singapore.
- Colorectal cancer: NZ, Singapore, Japan.
- Gastric cancer: NZ, Europe, Australia, China, UK, Japan, Taiwan.
- Adaptive learning system and method: NZ, US, Australia.
- Melanoma cancer: NZ, US.
- Thrombocytopenia: Europe.
(Source: Pacific Edge)
