The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
I reckon someone has dumped about a million shares this morning... we know Lindy has options expiring soon, so if she has raised £110k or so towards the cost of buying them, I guess we maybe have to take heart if she does in fact now buy them as it would signal confidence. As was suggested yeasterday, maybe the RNS and rather tepid interview, were designed to get some information into the public domain rather than encourage shareholders. That the price has dropped this morning on selling rather than yesterday is in my mind quite telling as I would have expected more "selling on news" yesterday than actually happened.
The hope must now be that we get notification the Lindy has secured her options , followed by a stonking, detailed RNS about partnering, product sales, patient numbers, etc. Etc. Designed to move the SP North. Who knows maybe Vulpes will buy a few more too.
Or am I clutching at straws?
Seems like once again an opaque RNS and an obviously poorly planned interview has managed to drive the SP in a southerly direction. How many times have we seen this? Someone really does need to get a grip on the tone of the communications to investors. We know that they would have to tell us any bad news, but surely they can write an RNS that highlights all the good news in a clear, unambiguous fashion? Sometimes its just bloody hard work investing and supporting this company.
A thought , does Lindy have Nasdaq at the back of her mind when she mentions the cash situation?
And does anyone else think they might be thinking of getting a product or two into the market before thinking about selling the company? It does seem like a strategy is evolving and the way forward becoming something more tangible at least in the boardroom.
It seems Avidimab is generating revenues which is also an encouraging development and will hopefully extend the cash runway at least a little. Overall it seems like solid progress, maybe we haven't blown the doors off quite yet, but, on the other hand, if Modi significantly improves the likes of Keytruda who knows where it might take us.
And lets not forget the £2.8 bn gross profit would give the better part of £1.5 -2bn net profit, multiply that by p/e of 15 which is on the low side for Biotech companies and you could be looking at a share price of £20.00+
AIM is all about news. its over a third of a year since we had some really good news but it is incredibly frustrating knowing that there is so much going on and so little news emerging. Maybe Lindy has been warned about letting her excitement out of the bag and has concluded its better to say nothing than say something she shouldn't but even so.. given that some companies put out an RNS every time someone changes the bog roll, this seems very, very quiet..... Checking, double checking and checking the double checking? I guess they would have told us by now if it wasn't working at all?
And then we now have the new PR company putting out fluff pieces about Lindy.... I have no doubt there is some sort of strategy behind it but its hard to see exactly where this is all heading... personally I would have started that sort of soft PR with something about our new Chairman and why he likes Scancell enough to join the BoD.
If you ignore the "Trish bounce" this has been going south since January. Since the RNS "Encouraging early efficacy data from ModiFY trial" of Feb 21st which only increased the SP by 1p here has been no news capable of moving the dial in a positive direction. Scientists don't give a toss about investors.... no mention of scib, covidity shelved, nothing about Avidimab, nothing further from Genmab, lots of conferences but no narrative. no video presentations... If the are doing a deal it had better be a bloody good one!
"NHS staff will be given the latest artificial intelligence (AI) technology to diagnose and treat patients more quickly thanks to a new £21 million fund announced by the Health and Social Care Secretary today"...... I hope we will be getting some of this !!...
Euromab in Hamburg was Sept 21st 2022 , deal was signed about 4/5 weeks later Oct 25th.
If you dont have anything much thats new to present, you wonder why the expense in cash and time makes it worth doing 2 conferences so close together... unless there is something that makes it worthwhile.... Fingers crossed, its about all we can do at the moment. Looks like it might be coming time for a root at the back of the sofa. Any ideas when we might expect some Scib news? Or maybe some more Mab news? How long does it take to reach these "milestones"? Genmab obviously saw something they liked to provoke a deal 9 months ago having potentially been playing with it for a year or so before that?
Well remembered Bermuda, my recollection was that there was lots of criticism of the small numbers on the initial trial, I had forgotten about Ichor. When the USA arm of the trial wasn't happening I remember thinking ( and saying) it would be better to do things in the UK where there is a bit more control of how things happen ... maybe we are seeing some of that control via a tight control of the results so far.
I think SCLP have learned a lesson from the original Scib trial, the numbers involved were too small to make a significant impact in the important circles. So now thèy want significant results from significant numbers.. we got excited by a single patient response but its the results of many more people over a longer time that will attract the most interest. So we wait, the news is in short supply and there aren't really any clues coming from patients, the Board or hospitals.... whilst we wait there are few new people investing and most LTHs are stocked up to levels they are comfortable with and slice by slice the SP falls as holders need to pay for a holiday or a new car.
Until...... it goes gangbusters on the basis of a huge announcement with more evidence than the biggest sceptic can complain about, until then we wait with fingers and toes crossed.
AB ... let it go! The news is out in the wild and there isn't anything anyone can do about it now. Most local papere encourage people to send stories to them so maybe a friend of a friend of a friend did, lets face it there isnt lots of good news these days....Scancell may or may not respond to this information being publicly available. It may well have caught them on the hop, but at some point they will have to say something especially if the Nationals get hold of it and I imagine they do monitor regional press.
https://twitter.com/scancellpharma/status/1652232419267731456?s=20
Its a long way to go to simply reiterate what is already in the public domain without even a short opportunity to make a speech. So either a) they intend to update the data with more (good) news or b) there is altogether another reason to be there... a meeting of some sort or a private presentation with some of Redmile's friends ... Nasdaq? Most of which would require an RNS. My other recent thought was that Modi might be a candidate for Orphan Drug Status for Head and Neck Cancer? I think the requirement is something like"unmet need in less than 200k patients"... there are about 66k H&N patients anually in the USA.
I wonder if Vulpes has just put down a marker for companies interested in buying a small UK Biotech company with a huge potential list of products designed to meet currently unmet needs? Their bullish attitude is certainly shouting " look at this".
Some time ago I suggested that PIs maybe needed a more clearly written statement of intent and explaination of the science, maybe this will serve that purpose, and just in time to support their presentation in the US....
It occured to me that there seems to be an overly large posse of staff and collaborators going to this conference simply for a 10 minute poster presentation? However, if you wanted to give a more in-depth presentation, say to an interested party, you might want to be able to let them quiz the people at the sharp end of the trials....alternatively it might just be an outing for people who have supported the progress so far?
March 2016, SCLP announced that they had partnered with the Karolinska institute to better their understanding of citrullination.
"Our research has previously shown that citrullinated proteins are involved in the control of tumour growth, which led us to the development of the Moditope® platform. The teams of professors Klareskog and Malmström have developed an understanding of the role of citrullinated proteins in the pathogenesis of the autoimmune disease, rheumatoid arthritis. We believe that this strategic collaboration with Karolinska will enhance our joint understanding of the role that citrullination plays in both cancer and rheumatoid arthritis, and will help us develop the Moditope® platform to its full potential.”
So can we cure RA too? Has there been any progress since? RA affects about 1% of the population......