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Iain Ross, Executive Chairman at Silence Therapeutics, commented: "I would like to thank our innovative scientists for coming up with this approach and our lawyers at Cooley LLP for assisting us, pro-bono, to put this agreement in place with TIB Molbio. I confirm that this initiative does not impact Silence's core business and that any funds generated from this initiative will be donated to the fight against COVID-19."
Rykan.Thank you for your thoughts,this is my first investment in biotech,previously always banks and retail'I sold some when it went from £4 to £6 last year so I am well in front.Like you I am looking long term on Silence which looks to have a very bright future especially since the A/Z tie up.I promise that I will stop being tied to the normal rules of investing and just go with the flo on this one.I had a very bad feeling in February that something was going to happen and sold all my bank and retail shares,got something right for once.Keep safe and keep your DISTANCE. Gotmiester.
Got
Looks like once again i'm not going to be able to add anything to your ruminations, as I agree - strange goings on. The recent fall back to me, maybe self justification, but looks like private investors taking profit on one of the few shares they have made some money on. Today's rise... who knows, maybe some snap back... total volume looks pretty low for the past week with most participants probably on the sidelines or sidelined. I agree I thought it would be a catalyst as well, again just repeating you...
In any case, for me, the AZ deal is way bigger and better than the MNK deal and the share price is now up approximately the same amount as the cash that went in to SLN for the AZ deal. Suffice to say, I think the shares are mispriced and should be higher. Volume after the MNK deal was way bigger as well looking at my chart... but I guess that is the strange times we live in.
In any case as we know this is biotech which is volatile... and we are in volatile times. Personally i'm keeping this for the long haul because of all the points I have posted previously. I'm looking forward to the CEO being announced, in 2 months or within this quarter, as it appears to me that these biotech CEOs do a fair bit of marketing.
Gla
Rykan.Can you shed any light on todays goings on.I have had a look but can't find anything to indicate a 43p drop.I saw the RNS about A/Z's initial share buy and thought that would give the share a lift.I saw an interview on Pro Investor yesterday with the Finance Guy and the Business Development Guy who came across very confident about the future ala DHS.Silence has been the one steady eddie during the past two weeks crazy markets and I naively thought that the A/Z deal would be the catalyst for take off and yesterday seemed the start.I have done really well with Silence in the past year and came back in during the crazy time.Although I have been a p/I for quite some time the intricacies of the AIM seem very strange at times.Today just a blip ?. Gotmiester.
Edison is a good read for what's going on. But their valuation methodology isn't forward looking. One only needs to compare their last report to this one. No value for any future deals... and that is one of the main reasons to invest.
In addition, as an example it's very certain that the IND for SLN360 will be filed at the end of the year, which will move sln360 to phase 1 and a 15% probability of sucess. That will add 167m in value on their model. Given its likelihood... The market ain't going to wait to price that.
But who am I to criticize their valuation. If this follows the same path that ARWR and Dicerna have laid out it is reasonable to assume 8-12 end of the year imho. With a few adjustments to the Edison model with what one expects to happen... One can get to those numbers.
Gla dyor
AZ are one of the biggest companys in this sector turning over 24.4 billion in 2019 and returning nearly 4 billion in dividends.I guess that they could have had their pick of any players in the Pharma/Biotechnology arena.Yet they chose Silence which indicates that AZ had done their homework and flagged Silence as a major player.The figures involved are game changers for any company.I have held Silence for a couple of years now and look forward to their future with renewed confidence. Stay safe out there all and don't forget "KEEP YOUR DISTANCE."
I see Edison have upped their valuation: "We have increased our valuation to £462m or 559p per basic share, from £345m or 440p per basic share."
Hopefully this will really fly now. A substantial collaboration with AZN is gold dust, and SLN are talking to other big pharmas too. Amazing.
Been out of shares for about 8 years but back in the game now, following the market crash. This caught my eye yesterday and bought in on minimal research. Will do some more research shortly! Thanks for the post - interesting stuff and some keywords that will help me research further. Cheers. :)
Wow what a deal.
Hope everyone is doing fine in lockdown. I did not even know about this deal until last night. Looks like things at silence are carrying on to plan. Which is astoundingly good news.
Personally I would consider this the extra-hepatic deal (being outside the liver), but no mind if others feel differently. It's a big deal and likely/possibly the only deal of this magnitude this year in RNAi given the others dance cards are full.
Cash is not a problem at silence, must be around USD110m(sorry lockdown/kids time constraints to check exact number). That gives the market in current conditions a big vote of confidence. No way can anyone imply that the platform isn't validated with multiple partners now. Still plenty to look forward to:
* New CEO end of Q2
* List in the US 2H
* File this IND for SLN360 2H
* Deal for SLN360 Q4/Q1 21
* Quark results as always delayed... Maybe Q4 now but possibly earlier
* MNK making another milestone payment
* MNK executing other options on 2 assets
* Announce other proprietary assets 2H
* Takeda transition to an actual deal
* possibly another pay to play deal like Takeda
* Sln124 now 21
As always this getting taken over is always a possibility. The value created yesterday imho isn't reflected in the share price because of current market conditions. As the flu passes this will grind higher I think, but possibly jump as it has done before.
In 1-2 years the PowerPoint presentation for SLN will have about 15 targets on it... At that stage the presentation is going to look very similar to... ARWR/Dicerna. The value inflection point has been reached but is not yet reflected in the current share price. Dyor, place your own bets. This one is a keeper, with that cash in the bank and the brightening outlook for drug R&D... It's not one to lose sleep over.
Well done all that managed to keep some of this in the current market turmoil. Last few weeks have been brutal.
Gla
25 March 2020
AstraZeneca to invest $80 million through upfront cash and equity investment in Silence
For each disease target, Silence is eligible to receive up to $400 million in milestones, plus tiered royalties
Companies to collaborate to achieve delivery of siRNA molecules to liver, heart, lung and other tissues
Silence retains the option to co-develop two programs discovered through the collaboration
Webcast and conference call today at 1pm GMT
closing now maybe
i assume its a buy
nice solid base to build from !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hopefully arsenal58 ... holding thumbs!!!
possible this week
scared a few traders but not me sit tight peeps
break 375 no resistance then to 425
Thank you for your insight Rykan.I have a reasonable investment in SLN but not life changing if it does not pan out.I suppose I was to a certain extent won over by DHS's almost rock star appearances on financial platforms in November/December.I have seldom seen a CEO more confident in his product and he really gave the impression that he was holding back the big news developments.
Hey ho as you say this is biotech.As a fromer law enforcement in the UK the biotech theatre of dreams is akin to one of our old sayings " this is a promise as to future Conduct",simply it may or may not happen.Hope it does as SLNs success may give a future to people who may not have this option at present.Keep smiling and HEALTHY.Gotmiester.
Hi Gotmeister
Firstly let me state I am no expert here. I have just been invested for 2yrs+ now having been long and wrong from back in the days where this to me appeared to be a play on SLN’s patent portfolio. Since then I have learned along the way and things have changed for the RNAi story considerably. It is now a strong tailwind over the short, medium and long term for this share imho.
As far as your comments re DHS departure, sounds like you have the same reasoning as me. I am not all that into the conspiracy theories elsewhere. May be he wasn’t sued before hand? Maybe he lied, who knows? It is unrelated to SLN and I guess should be a speed bump of a few months. As far as the recent share price moves I am not sure i’m going to add anything that you do not already know. I agree re the share price moves, for me it appears that it has moved to far. Yes maybe it was too high at 6, but 330/40 seems way to cheap for me even without a CEO – it has certainly created some negative sentiment for sure. The illiquidity of Christmas/New Year cant be helping but who knows. I saw those large trades as well. To me they were arranged buys above the market price. Even though there was a seller. The trades were done at 360 well above market price at the time– so the buyer saw value, otherwise why pay over.
Personally I remain a strong believer in the SLN story. The new CEO will be of a higher calibre (hopefully not bankrupt!), as we now have a higher market cap. The new CEO will have a mandate to list in the US and do all the same deals as before. No doubt the compensation will be tied to achieving it - as it was with DHS. All the same news items for the quarter and or half are still to come – but maybe a quarter later for the new CEO. However, I read on ADVFN and agree that Iain Ross the ExecChairman could possibly carry on the negotiations. So there might be an outside near term surprise on a deal of some kind in Q1 – especially if they were imminent before and he was working and has worked with the company for a number of years. QPI-1002/Quark – perennially late... but that feels like it is finally coming to a head at some stage...
The owners here, imho, with what has happened to the US RNAi market - quite clearly see deals (just like all the other companies Dicerna/ARWR), US listing and finally sale as the preferred outcome for their exit. As always though - this is biotech and we are being reminded of it right now.
I'm puzzled too. Anyone could shed some light?
Why is this falling over £10M large buys during the day????
Rykan.As a recent PI is SLN I have watched this share perform more u turns than the last Labour Government.Mid December 2019 it was the darling of the AIM and has several individual day increases that were hard to track as there was no data other than Horn Solomons mega positive interviews on financial platforms.Similarly after DHS's departure the SP has tanked.Once again other than him leaving there has been no other data that I can find to justify these drops in the SP.I still cannot get my head round the scenario where DHS is giving interviews where he looked like he was holding back fabulous news.Then wham!!!!! hes gone allegedly because he was being sued by a PI in a business in Denmark where DHS was a Senior Manager.Honestly you could not make this up,are we to believe that DHS did not disclose this to SLN when he was appointed CEO.I have been following SLN everyday and there has been large falls in the SP on day trading of about 40 to 60 K shares,how does that happen.Today I am even more confused I have been out all day and on checking todays trading saw that there was a small drop in the SP.Looked at the trades and there is showing nearly 3million buys today,they are at the end of day trades but are timed all through the day.As I am no techy I don't know how to highlight this ,I have taken a picture of these trades but you can look yourself up until midnight and see them.I have not got a clue what on earth is going on with this share.Having read your previous post on this chat board I would be obliged for your thought on these matters.Regards Gotmiester.
falling as quick as it rose :)
Thanks.
To be fair it is pretty difficult to work it all out because of the length of time, conflicting articles, new nomenclature and different studies etc.
if the outcome is positive I am pretty certain that it would trigger a milestone payment, what that amount would be I am not certain. In 2010 SLN had a statement re Quark and QPI-1002 that payments would be up to 80m.... but that is from a long time ago. Quark were to receive up to 680m from Novartis, again according to a 2010 article. Silence have received some payments but the info that one can find is pretty sparse and appears to be small amounts less than USD2m.
My thinking is that successfully getting into the NDA would trigger a milestone payment from Novartis to Quark and hence to Silence. I would think the amount would be material amount for both Quark and Silence - given the numbers from the 2010 articles. I would think in the order of 20m for silence but possibly more. I don't have much experience here - but i'd assume the milestone payments under these agreements would be heavily loaded towards the later phases of trial completions and applications rather than early - that is how I would structure it.
Personally i'm not sure how the NDA approval can still happen in December, but SBI Group thought that at the end of October and on the 2nd of December. If a positive announcement comes out in illiquid Christmas/New Year markets it could be very interesting.
"Quark holds a licence to Silence's chemical modification technology. Silence is eligible to receive either
approximately 1.5%-4% royalties from Quark (on QPI-1002) plus milestones, or 15% of the clinical,
regulatory and commercial milestone payments and royalties received by Quark from its partner Novartis."
https://www.silence-therapeutics.com/media/1808/quark-first-patient-dosed-in-phase-3-clinical-trial-for-acute-kidney-injury.pdf
"~ Milestone Payment from Quark Pharmaceuticals of up to $1.5 Million for QPI-1002 & Future Milestone Payments to Reach up to $80 Million ~"
https://www.silence-therapeutics.com/umbraco/Surface/Download/Download?url=%2Fmedia%2F1439%2Frelease_101221.pdf&filename=release_101221.pdf
"Novartis licenses QPI-1002 from Quark Pharma for $680 million"
https://www.currentpartnering.com/2010/08/25/novartis-licenses-qpi-1002-from-quark-pharma-for-680-million/
The backstory on QPI-1002 for DGF, as far as I could tell from working through various SBI presentations, was that formally it failed to meet the primary end-point of the original Phase 3 trial. However, Quark argued that this was because they changed some of the parameters between Phase 2 and Phase 3, in particular reducing the minimum cold storage time before transplantation, and that if they looked just at those patients where cold storage time was longer than 24 hours, the drug showed "utility". So ever since it appears they've been negotiating with the FDA to get into the New Drug Application process, despite not having met the primary end-point of the original study. This is why there has been such a delay compared to the original timetable for Phase 3 completion. In the meantime QPI-1002 for AKI is coming towards the end of its Phase 3 study, and SBI have talked about also having some preliminary indications of how that has gone around the end of the year.
SBi Group (which own Quark) on 2 December released a presentation which is on this page http://www.sbigroup.co.jp/english/investors/disclosure/presentation/
On slide 113
"Financial Result Effects from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration 's (FDA) Decision on the Transition to the New Drug Application (NDA) Process for U.S.-based Quark's Prophylaxis of Delayed Graft Function (DGF) in Kidney Transplants, which is Expected to be Finalized in Dec. 2019"
So at the start of December SBI Group still expected results in December for QPI 1002. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00802347
I have no doubt they will be able to attract a new CEO easily. They gave DS nearly 2m options with an average strike price below 1.50. I would assume that those options are now up for grabs for any new CEO. The RNAi space has clearly attracted interest with the MDCO takeover, additional RNAi drug approval by the FDA and plenty of big pharma to RNAi company deals. DS has done the ground work on the US listing and deals that were in advanced stages. I would think any CEO would be salivating at getting to unlock the clear value and catalysts for the share price of SLN and for them personally by the options they are going to get.
Whilst DS departure for personal reasons is regrettable currently for the share price, long term the fundamentals haven’t changed. Arrowhead ARWR is still worth nearly 7b. Dicerna DRNA 1.8b – all of the read across on the assets are still there. As we all know the share prices of these relevant comparable companies have gone 10-20-30X+ over 1 to 2 years. The SLN potential deals in advanced stages, whilst yes delayed because of DS departure – they are not going to stop. A new CEO will just carry the baton on.
I had the following catalysts for this quarter
* Results of the quark research, which is well delayed.
* Phase1b trials starting for sln124.
* Possible another milestone payment from MNK
* Possible partner deal on another asset but possibly this Extra-hepatic thing
Regrettably none of them have happened… yet… Quark results can come at any time - SBI Group the owner of Quark stated December hat tip to 1gw from advfn, but yes likely in the new year now… work will be continuing at SLN - the phase1b trial is going ahead, always possible to get a milestone payment – work is continuing.
In 2020 SLN will have a new CEO, they will have SLN listed in the US + Lp(a) deal + Extra-hepatic deal + Phase1b trial data for SLN124 mid year + milestone payments for MNK + quark results + imho MNK executing its 2 complement medicine options.
The market cap and share price for SLN at the end of 2020 is going to be considerably higher is my bet.
Gla, atb