Insider: bosses make fortunes backing Covid-19 winners

Small companies involved in testing for coronavirus have delivered phenomenal share price gains.

A 2,000% share price rise since January has not deterred Novacyt (LSE:NCYT) boss Graham Mullis from using £30,000 of his own money to back the Covid-19 testing firm for more success.

The fact that CEO Mullis has purchased almost 10,000 Novacyt shares at 310p should be a fillip for the many retail investors who've turned this AIM-listed minnow into one of the most traded stocks on the interactive investor platform.

Novacyt shares rocketed from 15p to 491p in the space of three months, and traded as low as 6p as recently as October, but have lost momentum since mid-April, despite the company reporting further progress towards its goal of delivering more than 10 million tests per month from June.

Source: TradingView. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.

The dotcom style surge for its shares has been mirrored at a number of small-cap stocks involved in the fight against Covid-19.

They include Manchester-based diagnostics firm Genedrive (LSE:GDR), whose stunning progress over recent weeks has resulted in big paper profits for directors who bought its shares in February prior to a pandemic being declared.

CEO David Budd spent £5,000 on 43,300 Genedrive shares at a price of 11.5p on 4 February, the day before chairman Dr Ian Gilham picked up £10,000 worth of shares at just 8p.

The stock peaked at 220p earlier this month and currently trades at 188p, buoyed by the successful development of its easy-to-use test for high-throughput coronavirus testing.

Source: TradingView. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.

Genedrive has also been boosted by news that its kit for diagnosing hepatitis C infection in low and middle-income countries has World Health Organisation pre-qualified status.

Directors also participated in an £8 million fundraising earlier this month when a total of 8.75 million new shares equivalent to 20% of the company were placed at 80p a share.

The faith shown by investors was rewarded on Friday when Genedrive announced its Covid-19 test had the CE-IVD mark and was available for commercial sale across the EU, including the UK.

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At infection prevention and control company Byotrol (LSE:BYOT), demand for its long-lasting germ sanitiser sprays has been one factor helping to transform its shares from just 1.68p at the start of the year to 7p in April, and 6.45p seen on Friday.

This month, the company reported record first-quarter sales and said it had secured two new license agreements.

Back in late January, non-executive chairman John Langlands and finance director Nic Hellyer bought one million and 500,000 Byotrol shares respectively at prices between 1.79p and 1.83p.