The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
Reminds me of when we were lucky enough to visit SA when it was relatively safe to do so. What a lovely country and it was probably one of our finest adventures, even including getting bumped off our flight from Joburg (airport not city) to Cape Town, which led to an epic event, probably too long for here.
When we overnighted in the Kruger, we kept hearing sounds of items falling from trees.
The next morning we looked outside and we were surrounded by Macadamia trees and the noise was the nuts falling to the ground.
Just noticed the final paragraph of my post of yesterday at 16.05:
"I believe CT has stated on the record that the next step is to get XF-73 into phase 3, so I agree that a takeover at this stage is highly unlikely but, as I've posted before, deals on phase 3 ready products have already been signed by GSK and AZ this year but not in this market sector."
Folk have probably deduced what I should have written but nonetheless "deals on phase 3 ready products" should have course read "takeovers".
I'm not sure how your option 4 would work beyond my option 2, because in effect the gifting of 9.5 million shares (circa 10%) as part of a deal at anything above market price is no different to them paying the difference in market price and your broker price of £2.75. To make that clearer, and only as an example, they pay say £5 million for the platform, plus a royalty and commercialise the product upon a successful phase 3 trial. If the shares are trading at say 75p at the time the deal is struck, then they might just as well pay the extra 9.5 million x £2. Presumably if any kind of share deal was struck then new shares would have to be issued, other wise where would they come from ? I hope that makes sense. I suppose it boils down to practicalities of such a deal and whether they would want a slice of Destiny, having acquired their lead platform.
I believe CT has stated on the record that the next step is to get XF-73 into phase 3, so I agree that a takeover at this stage is highly unlikely but, as I've posted before, deals on phase 3 ready products have already been signed by GSK and AZ this year but not in this market sector.
OD
As others have pointed out, under normal circumstances, with a cash runway to Q1 2025, there shouldn't be any need for cash until I'd say around the late summer. That said who knows what's going to come out of the woodwork.
The M3 news on the face of it, involves a slight delay and look what happened there.
The buyers are certainly out today, perhaps a tip somewhere, such as JW buying again :)
Tillerman
What left field event did you have in mind?
To my mind the options are:
1/ License deal for XF-73 nasal to include phase 3 trial and commercialisation.
2/ The same but including the whole XF-73 platform
3/ A take over of the whole Company
If anyone has any other thoughts, I'd be pleased to hear them.
I don't really understand your comments about M3.
On the face of it there's a 6 month delay and although CT appears to want to make the decision his property, as I posted previously, this was being worked on nearly a year ago. In saying that my understanding is that changing to a "solid dose formulation" involves changing manufacturer and the drug will be in a powder filled capsule rather than a liquid filled one. The announcement on 31st January was lacking in detail (on the above point alone) and served as a catalyst for a sell off of the Company's shares. If the FDA are happy with an equivalence test and unless I've missed it, why was this not mentioned in either the September or January releases.
Looking at all angles, one could be forgiven for believing that Tovey wanted the share price lower, but why ?
Or perhaps he just wanted to p*ss off Sebela, perhaps hoping they would walk away. The market certainly wasn't happy with the deal at the time and perhaps he agrees with the market.
Opaque doesn't do it justice.
Poor article which highlights many of the problems in dealing with these people but omits arguably the most important one
, Savannah's dispute with Chad and the nationalisation of our assets. Threatening and doing are somewhat different animals, although both members of the same family. The follow on from this is of course the negative impact this must be having of further international investment in Chad.
Quite incredible that the author skirted round it.
I'm well aware that date was released in July but in my post I was specifically drawing attention to the fact that there was no efficacy data released following the NIAID study.
There's a video presentation in which the ex CEO Neil Clark mentions that they are going to re formulate M3. When I have time I will find it and post it. In between times have a look at page 10 in this presentation from March 2023:
https://destinypharma.com//wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Destiny-Pharma-Non-Confidential-March-2023.pdf
I think that we all believed in the story, otherwise why buy ?
The appointments of Rudd and Tovey were the catalysts that got me on board, complementing what appears to be compelling science in both M3 and the lead product, the XF- 73 platform. For a tiny bio pharma, with a market cap of under £30 million at the time, and two phase 3 ready products , it seemed worth the risk in these savage market times (possibly unprecedented) for small caps.
However, I did not blindly invest and like you I questioned to myself why a deal on XF-73 was taking so long.
This worry was reinforced when Chris Tovey attended the San Francisco Biotech showcase in January and he is due to go to the Bio Europe conference later this month. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it but hardly the actions of a CEO about to pen a deal with big pharma. And of course it's always a concern when there appears to be a constant seller of the shares, although admittedly rather than a large holder reducing, it could just be private investor's churn, particularly bearing in mind the volume restrictions often placed by the market makers in the stock.
All that said, the share price decline following the rns of 31st January, with good news for XF-73 dermal and a delay with M3. was brutal. The latter was old news, the likelihood already flagged up by the company, but this clearly took many by surprise and they took both flight and fright.
The concern I have about the rns is not the news contained within it but rather what wasn't disclosed. Namely XF-73 dermal produced positive data from the pre clinical safety study, in this respect it passed with flying colours.
But I ask myself, why no mention of the efficacy of the product against Staphylococcus aureas. Even though this wasn't the main focus of the study, I'd be surprised if they did not have available data on this.
I still want to believe the story but given the above, I currently sit on the sidelines, awaiting further news from the Company, upon which I will make a decision one way or the other.
I take the opposite view. A share split would be the most logical course of action, particularly if YU want to get the institutions on board. But at what ratio ? I'd say somewhere in the region of 1 for 10 .
Best of luck to you good folk.
Zengas
I've just had a top up of our gas contracts as per the Company website and they total 276 mmscfd.
Whilst accepting that some of these are on a 80% take or pay basis, presumably we have to have sufficient gas at any one time to fulfil any one customer's total requirements ?
Can you please explain to me how this reconciles with the current design capacity of 200 mmscfd.
It's obviously too late this week but if anyone uses a genuine broker where you get to talk to the same person every time and know their name then ask them to find out who the seller is.
Unfortunately, I lost my broker contacts many moons ago.