Member Info for Spacman

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?

"Clearly now bearing fruit"?!?

The SP is fourpence.

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.

Dippfs, suggest you shout over to Aether who can fill you in. His bed is next to the green bin which is often overflowing.

However, he may be out on another ward at the moment... he does a matinee performance of his show on Thursdays, delighting other "residents" with his range of characters fashioned entirely from feet-based haute-couture!

:)

Agreed Fruits, I'm only postulating a possible scenario, I don't disagree with anything you say. My main point is that it looks like something is imminent with the Synairgen management team "departures" of RH and HG.

However, if you take the CEO and CFO out of the plc and second them into the JV, then replacements are needed by the plc. Unless, of course, J&J are happy with the dual reporting line approach.

I can't see how Synairgen can keep a lid on this much longer.

All hypothetical, but could this be how the JV organization chart is shaping up?

CEO - Marcin Mankowski

CFO - Helen Gearing

CCO - Richard Hennings

Note that Marcin was never appointed to the Synairgen plc board, and HG & RH are still publicly holding themselves out as Synairgen employees, so an obvious conflict of interest is avoided (on Marcin's part) and employment-related shares/options are retained by all three secondees. Being a shareholder in one of the partners would have to deemed acceptable under this scenario.

If there is anything in this, then RH and HG have clearly moved off to this new structure, so Marsden's belligerent silence has to break soon.

Aether, hide your laptop and get back into bed, Nurse Ratched is doing her rounds!

You were our counter of revenue and expense

But you never got to count revenue

Keith's mum is Marsden's turf accountant

His biggest bet was £80m and it lost

But that was other people's money so it's alright

Prof - yes, I think it's that binary.

High-level guess...

No commercial enablement and the management team clinging to the asset = £0m

Commercial enablement and the management team partially clinging to the asset = £400m

Commercial enablement and BP taking over the reins completely from the Synairgen management team = £1bn

The metrics to compare are other P2/3 companies.

DYOR.

It was all set for Synairgen - they had Rick Bright (the Donald) to front it, they'd attended the dating agency at the JPM conference to find a SPAC partner from the several hundred knocking around, and they'd had an American BP marcomms expert already laying out the PR (Brooke Clarke); oh, and they had commenced recruitment of a GM for the US.

What changed? I suspect the "sequential strategist" Marsden probably discovered late in the process that he and the other Synairgen execs would face stock lock-ins of several years, whilst we shareholders would have seen an immediate uptick on AIM to £5+ per share and have been able to sell at will.

Also of course, the CEO of a US company needs to deal with the challenging scrutiny of NYSE/NASDAQ through quarterly earnings reports and continuous analyst enquiries. Dickie? Hmm. They may even have been looking to replace him with an American CEO to appease the market, which again would have been a showstopper probably.

I do believe that there is a transformative deal in the offing and it could easily take the SP past £2 (that's still only an enterprise value of £400m for a company that is at P2/3 and suddenly attains the enablement to commercialise). But the SPAC route would have yielded more for UK AIM shareholders in my (not so humble lol) opinion.

The next few (days?) could be very exciting, let's see what deal they have actually landed before final judgment, it could be big!

AIMHO

GLALTHs!

There is plenty to update on fundamental aspects: anticipated location of trials, likely partnership arrangements, progress made by the addition of a Chief Medical Officer, reasoning behind the removal of the role of Chief Commercial Officer. All of this can be articulated without breaching any confidential/commercial/regulatory matter, and it would help shareholders assess their investment.

Equally, a primary fiduciary duty for a listed company director is to ensure that the market value of its shares reasonably reflects the underlying value of the company. The PR blackout directly contravenes this, demonstrable by an SP below cash value. The endless posts on here about positive interferon research shows there’s plenty to shout about in this field, yet the market hears nothing directly from the company.

It seems that Marsden’s ego has been stung by the criticism and he is now determined to not communicate unless legally obliged to do so. The fault here lies just as much with the supine BoD who allow him to get away with it.

Hopefully the clock is ticking on the audit sign-off (I can’t see BDO bending for Synairgen) and there will need to be an announcement of a funding solution very shortly.

Tommy, what’s the basis for your timeline thinking? I do agree btw. I’m still reckoning that a funding solution is first on the critical path ahead of the audit sign-off and AGM which are hard stop dates.

I don’t think Synairgen hold the pen on the timeline though… US regulators possibly?

"Judging from most of the comments on here, investor fatigue is now well and truly entrenched. I suspect many individual retail investors would be relieved to see any type of JV and eventual takeover, in order to finally see SNG leave their portfolios."

Yup.

SSNG001 licensing

The Board is pleased with the progress to date. Although there can never be a guarantee that a

transaction will be completed, licensing discussions are progressing well and it is anticipated that the

terms of the agreement will be in line with the Board’s expectations.

Here: https://synairgen.ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com/SNG-Update-5-March-2014.pdf

Fruits/Tommy - at the time of the AZ announcement in 2014, do you know whether the trials had received regulatory approval?... am just wondering if this is on the critical path to the J&J announcement we are waiting for now.

Headline in The Sun:

INSOLENT CEO IN SOLENT

Doc Dan's penultimate paragraph sums up the folly of the Sprinter spend perfectly. Why they didn't get it co-funded by BP and keep half (or more) of the funds back for a Plan B... is bizarre. They needed BP for distribution in the event of success anyway, so why didn't they trade those rights then?

Hopefully, the ticking clock on Going Concern audit qualification will provide LTHs with respite very shortly. Wouldn't an RNS on Monday be welcome!

Tommy - I would see Synairgen in discussions presently aiming for J&J to inject sufficient funding (maybe into a JV which needn't be 50:50 economically, but would provide some governance control for J&J) to cover the costs of the P2s, with J&J wanting options on P3 involvement and subsequent franchising/licensing rights. The latter options would then give J&J a stronger negotiating start for full-blown acquisition at some point post-P2.

If something like this is actually under negotiation (noting Casanovalabs are instrumental which complicates and perhaps delay things) then it would be fantastic news for LTHs.

To this end, it's a real guess what the CCO's recent departure heralds... hope springs eternal.

Mani - there's no capacity to fund-raise, it's a non-starter. That's why nobody agrees with you.

If TFG were willing, then it would have already happened, but their strategy these past two years has been to make Synairgen "cut their cloth."

There is likely to be some kind of corporate or commercial event to provide a funding solution, that is the next step and it will breathe life into the SP IMHO. If that wasn't the next step then the P2s would have started by now.