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Anybody out there have any idea what on earth is going on here.RNS this morning saying that a non exex. director had been installed as Chairman and that Solomon was looking forward to working with him.Further RNS's to the effect that Solomon had resigned because he was being sued by an individual investor in an Danish firm that had gone bankrupt.Solomon was a Senior Manager at that company between 2016/18.Sounds to me like a pretty lame excuse and something stinks.So an aggrieved investor says he is going to sue you,okay I'll resign before there is any court case which could take years to resolve.Any of you long term investors have any inside track on what on earth is going on here.I saw Solomon doing an interview a couple of weeks and he sounded like the cat who had the cream.
Don't know, but it looks like a creditor of DS finally ran out of patience and took the draconian step of a bankruptcy motion, which costs and attracts all other creditor interests too. It's not just suing DS for a private debt. Maybe DS has now been made bankrupt, the court unwilling to grant him extra time, despite his confidence? Financially very serious for a person, and likely to limit what one can do in business going forward.
Embarrassing for SLN, and some questionmarks over the bod's judgment re DS perhaps (it's not great to have an insolvent CEO) which might spook investors, but hopefully this is only a temporary blip for the company and the SP. The underlying company fundamentals remain, and we're told this issue is an unrelated skeleton rattling in an unrelated cupboard.
SP continuing south today though.
The sooner a quality CEO is appointed the better.
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
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
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.
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/
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.
Why is this falling over £10M large buys during the day????
I'm puzzled too. Anyone could shed some light?
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.
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.