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Just gone back and checked - the 2022 Annual Report (that BDO signed off on in May 2022) stated that the P2 trials would commence in H2 2023. It would be interesting to understand what future projections (which underpin the Going Concern assessment) have been provided by the company to BDO for the audit this year, and how much confidence BDO have in those.
It's probably going to take a compliance issue like this to force the BoD's hand to undertake a transaction. Otherwise you've got a "law unto himself" CEO happy to keep taking a £350k package for "leading" an organisation that has no trials to run, no customers to serve, no manufacturing to do, no communications to bother about.. but 30 staff to help out just in case.
You really couldn't make it up.
Gunto - the unknown (to us) is the cost of the trials, and if the company is still pre-revenue come the start of Q2 2026 which is what your scenario is suggesting, then all that will be affecting the auditors' confidence in the Going Concern stress-testing they're doing. Do you think BDO have great confidence in the BoD? I doubt it.
Mr Costs - you're right, they could announce cessation of trials intent and then that is a Business Plan (if that's what you can still call it) they can certainly deliver on. But that decision (which would need to be RNS'd as it's a material change in a company that then becomes dormant save for paying salaries) is a game-changer in itself... suddenly the company is saying there are no prospects for ever creating a revenue stream. I'm not a company law expert, but a basic understanding of fiduciary duty would suggest that the directors are then duty-bound to put the company or its assets up for sale to realise value for the shareholders.
AIMHO. DYOR.
Thanks for your expectations timeline Gunto. I don't think that Business Plan timeline would pass the Going Concern test they're possibly up against with the auditors currently, unless there's some funding solution, JV etc. announcement about to come.
Gunto - of course TFG will be totally supportive of the management until the day they they aren't. In a heartbeat they will pounce, they can pull over £100m back potentially, they won't just let things fester with an inadequate management.
The natural order here is that SNG001 should now be in the hands of a BP that has done hundreds of thousands of P2's and P3's. By contrast the Synairgen team, with the exception of Mankowski, have done a handful. Even Mankowski has infinitesimal experience by comparison to the combined institutional history of a BP. I hope SSH is realising that it's time to move this on.
Well then Gunto, hopefully TFG now move to dissolve the BoD and get the company auctioned off to BP and some money back to shareholders.
J&J might just pay $400m for full control of a clean Synairgen without the deadweight of Marsden et al.
Tommy, you seem to have changed your tune a bit from "news will be soon" two months ago? Yes, I got wind of the same "info" then, which simply confirms that certain members of the Synairgen BoD will say anything to appease in the moment (remember their promise to improve comms at the last AGM) or in the case of the CEO, abdicate responsibility and say absolutely nothing. All of it is pathetic.
However, they may be able to fool some of the people some of the time etc. but they need the accounts signing off within the next five weeks and BDO won't be so easily appeased over the Going Concern issue. Synairgen will have to say something soon.
Hopefully the recent organisational restructuring means a JV is in the offing.
GLALTHs
TP - it's this person:
https://theorg.com/org/synairgen-plc/org-chart/hazel-pitt
The Quality Director was actually recruited as recently as December 2022, which supports the guess that they were still trying to keep the full-service pharma entity idea alive through a pivot to the US at that time (but obviously not for the manufacturing part). Of course we'll never know because the company never explains anything, probably because Marsden has no substantive vision but just a vague dream of the future.
Yes it's favourable but it's very much a sideshow at this point in time. It's what's happening to those things that the company is in control of, front-and-centre, right now, that we need to understand.
Synairgen have just terminated the Quality Director which might suggest that manufacturing capability is no longer their focus, following on from dropping the commercial side. If they are retrenching into R&D and licensing out SNG001 to a third party or through a JV, great. People who talk about resisting a JV and sharing the pie only post-P2, do you really want to risk having 100% of nothing, or would you prefer X% of something? I would rather see a hike in the SP now than trust Marsden & Co. to deliver something bigger, later, on their own.
With any luck, the potential Going Concern audit qualification problem will force a funding solution to be announced pretty shortly.
The Stock Exchange will be none too pleased with a member that has a strategy of non-communication risking huge volatility. They encourage controlled dialogue between companies and the market. Suspect Consilium were scrabbling around to silence the UKHSA person and then get a message out on LinkedIn ("Wot's that?" asked Marsden). Note they shied away from Twitter/X where derision seems to follows any of their posts, usually referencing Marsden's £360k early retirement annuity.
Reactive messaging forced upon them after the UKHSA employee tweets then removes her tweet yesterday (oh dear...). All comes with their stupid blanket policy of radio silence.
Still, all good news, and they have to issue a directors report no later than 21 days before the AGM, so they can't keep us in the dark forever.
It's difficult to see how they field the question, "So what are the next steps?" tomorrow when nothing has been announced to the market. so a pre-emptive RNS would seem reasonable, unless there is no Q&A or any sort of dialogue expected. The word "conference" might be a clue here...
Fruits - "Not long now I expect"
The CCO and the Senior VP Finance have both been moved out of the "Senior Management" as defined by the Synairgen website. It suggests there is no longer a need for commercial input (since last week in February) and the year-end accounting/audit process has completed (HG was obviously "kept on" in the role until the end of Q1).
Commercial arrangements (definitely) and audit approval (possibly) are the triggers to an announcement. Can anyone think of what else might be delaying an announcement?
Doc83:-
"I'm wondering if some of the unknown trades are just existing holdings being switched in the market to ISA accounts. Volume needs to massively increase, though. That'll only happen with news."
Could be both ISA and new tax year SIPP contributions, and could also be an impending RNS re: the Porton Down collaboration. If the Synairgen representatives are to be empowered to speak freely across the piece tomorrow, then there is potentially disclosure risk that will need to mitigated by an RNS in advance?
Be fair Fruits, that's a perfect succinct appraisal by DocDan.
Like a drunk who's just won £80m on the lottery, Marsden staggered into the nearest casino to put the majority of it on black and it came up red. Didn't anyone on the BoD apply any business acumen and suggest a contingency plan (over and above keeping enough chips back just sufficient to fund their own remuneration for a few years)? They could have readily got BP to fund a substantial element of Sprinter in return for future licensing/distribution rights, which wouldn't have been any concession as such because Synairgen would have needed that BP involvement anyway.
Hardly Harvard MBA stuff, but no, no Plan B. But even pot-less, the US pivot was still on post-Sprinter until the BoD realised the SPAC bonanza for the UK shareholders also entailed stock lock-ins for themselves and US market scrutiny of their activity. Synairgen is a company run by the Directors for the Directors, it seems.
Let's hope the impending audit sign-off requires a funding solution to be announced, and/or the Porton Down collaboration stimulates a requirement to break the silence. Pure childish belligerence on Marsden's part, dressed up as "market sensitivity." SNG001 is worth $400m+ in the market place, why isn't it showing in the SP? Because this BoD's dead hand is on it.
Grrrr.
I still believe an announcement is imminent and the SP will rocket (well it has to from being a penny share surely). But it will be sub-optimal compared to an outright sale to BP. GLALTH.