Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Thanks for the clip Clive. I’m not sure Mr Buffet used or implied the term long suffering nor whether Berkshire Hathaway would hold Reneuron stock but nonetheless his and your point about the foolishness of monitoring stock movement on a daily basis and the psychological requirement to be able to manage anxiety over the long term are appropriate and well made.
With just over a month to go to publication of the interims, it would good to hear anticipated cash and deal positions from those with an inside track. Thanks - have a fab Halloween
Thanks. Both sets of slides suggest fun presentations but nonetheless hopefully informative ones.
You make an interesting point Phil.I fall into the first category buying what, forgetting subsequent dilution, was in effect a dime share. Like now, development at the time of purchase was pre-clinical and years off production and like now had vocal advocates, who saw little risk but only eye watering returns. It’ll be interesting to see whether Rene 2 mirrors that experience or whether today’s cheerleaders will have more luck. I hope they do but like we experienced industry odds are stacked against it.
Thanks Sajy. Normal business practice suggests a required cash buffer of at least six months. On the basis of your hypothesis we should therefore expect completed deals between now and Spring. These need to be significant to positively impact cash. A proportionate lead time also suggests these have to be in train to prevent a cash call, which as you imply would be contextually difficult. Let’s hope recent recruitment provides some evidence that non-diluting cash is on its way! I’ve learnt over many Rene years however not to hold my breath but I do hope your ties and knowledge of the company proves to be correct. Have a good weekend.
Thanks sajy; you’ve clearly an inside track. Given Rene’s cash-runway, and the concern many of us have about further dilution, what’s of interest is the timing of deals and their impact on cash. Given your inside knowledge we’d appreciate your informed view. Clearly quoting mid/end ‘23 is in one sense meaningless as the business without some facility would never sustainably get to zero. Thanks in anticipation.
Well done Phil. The term topping up has frequently been used by others on this board to reflect literally handfuls of shares bought. Nice to see a contributor significantly backing the business with a 50k purchase. I wish you well. My last purchase of this scale was when the sp was sadly much greater than thirty cents, but c’est la vie! Good luck.
Thanks Phil. Catherine’s strategic reset is of course defined and driven by the reality of a lack of cash to continue clinical trials of legacy assets. Assets that Thomason, perhaps understandably, puts little value on. In this last throw of the dice sorry strategic realignment or reset we’re dependent on the nascent potential of pre-clinical research, to hopefully play some part in stretching the cash runway into 2024. Sadly for those of us who are way under water a Thomason valuation of a buck/share is possibly less attractive than to those Board members who recently bought in and who at that sort of price could wash their face in a sale. Nevertheless it seems Rene and Catherine will keep our attention for a while longer; I wish her and us well.
I hope so Clive. But of course many of us will remember the last time the Finance Officer was promoted. Then our trajectory was upwards and optimism abounded; his primary role was to provide time and space through finance issues of one form or another. Will history be repeated or will she oversee a sale? It’s probably a safe bet, given the nature of our cash position, and the modest initial value of licences, that it’ll be one or the other.
Yuri, I think yours is the 64 million dollar question and sadly one I’ve never heard answered. Whether the runway is beginning, middle or end of ‘23 is in one sense arbitrary because if Rene is to continue they have to get cash in way before that. There’s been mention of other licensing deals but if the £1m from China is indicative then another like that would be the equivalent of a couple of months cash-burn. So as you ask, what next? Are they treading the boards for a fire sale? A 40% premium would give us around 50 cents, and a buck would wash the face of recent investors. Sadly I’m not one of those! As always I hope the optimists are right but I’ve yet to be able to rationalise their arguments.
Like for many this was a penny stock when I first bought in, with possibly more hope than judgement. From a few cents it went through dilution to several dollars and now in quantitive terms the number is slightly more than my initial purchase albeit a hundred times less in real terms. Through what has seemed a lifetime the posts have shown remarkable consistency, feeding off the snippets the company puts out and extrapolating several fold.
Around about my beginning Freddie was the dominant force, irrepressible in his optimism, what some referred to as ramping. More latterly Phil has taken up the mantle and now Sajy. Sadly the persistent theme throughout has been posters have rarely called it right. Of course I enjoy reading their positive outlook and I too hope that like a broken clock it’s at least right once. Who knows perhaps Sajy will succeed where others have failed. I do hope so. Have a good weekend.
Wow, as there are only three basic parts to the brain, has Rene discovered a fourth? Hopefully we’ll get a RNS one day, which will predict a paradigm shift in sp in the Immediate term. Fingers crossed.
Have a good May weekend.
Are we really saying directors are withholding information on exosomes to personally profit? I really do need to read UK’s companies acts, as my limited understanding suggests conflicts of interest and future transactions are adequately covered.
Al, whilst too familiar with UK stock market rules usually a period two months before annual accounts and a shorter period before interims? So May and June? Others will be more familiar particularly when Rene publishes results.
There are many who follow this business far closer than me so I would be grateful for an insight into the future. We have had phase trials into stroke and retina, which at best are inconclusive and at worse reflect not untypical novel phase failures. We now seem to be pinning our hopes on university research projects, some of which run four years into the future, and even if successful are possibly a decade away from producing a patient remedy? So the question for me is what’s going to happen over the next twelve months, when once again our cash runs out, that’s going to provide a paradigm shift in how this business and hence it’s worth is perceived? Perhaps a question for the Board rather than this board!
I never thought I’d read, let’s hope the sp holds at 50 cents but I agree small mercies! I too have no insight into Obotritia’s strategy but if I was a betting man, it’s possibly not a commentary on a positive future, but nonetheless if Obotritia is selling someone is buying the risk at this price.
Cash is often cited in relation to share price but as you will know it’s relevance must be contextualised by burn rate and what may be achieved with that cash. Otherwise it would simply be a negative curve as cash is burnt. Rene invests modestly which minimises cash out the door but may be a negative in terms of achievement. But it is where it is so the judgement is, what could be achieved in the near to medium term with the cash we have. Phil highlights some possibilities but nonetheless suggesting the weighting is towards the upside is of course simply a guess. I like many others hope his hypothesis is correct but thus far every prediction on this board apart from the observations of the soothsayers has not come to fruition. Perhaps that’ll change? But as Phil underlines in his first paragraph we’re not the people to ask, and if the Board know they’re keeping it fairly close to their chests!
I very much hope I’m wrong and that the development time for commercially exploiting exosomes is better than I fear, that lucrative partnerships can be found for the retinal programme, and Fosun will strike gold. Of course denial is the first symptom of bereavement followed closely by anger!. We pay our money and take our choice on what we believe. Deciding whether to stay, go or even to top up. It was always a risk; that’s why rewards could have been great or why failure is ever present. C’est la vie.
There was a time when Fosun was to be the saviour of our world, delivering an abundance of riches, but we’re about to cash a cheque for half a million bucks, from which we’ll need to deduct I presume international lawyers’ fees. Now of course we’ve moved our attention and hopes onto exosomes and it’s pre-clinical trials, but even with a fair wind it’s probably several years of development out. If one subscribes to the concept of an efficient market, as I do, and think it’s both appealing intellectually and remarkably well supported by the facts, then perhaps a buck a share is presently a realistic price.
Nonetheless I continue to enjoy reading our optimism and equally recording an alternative spin, but like everyone else I hope this will soon be a $50 share, albeit I’m not seeing much evidence to support that aspiration nor does the market. But I’ll hang on just in case and hope others’ dreams come true sooner than I expect! Have a good weekend and fingers crossed that the Board has better access to information than we or the market does.
Thanks Phil for your new year appraisal. Of course we would all like ‘exosomes’ to succeed but I’m not sure I’m after the deal you imply.
Its probably fair to assume any potential acquirer will be sophisticated; their price algorithm will discount the purchase price to reflect inherent risk in a five to ten year development. A development which is presently way way short of clinical trials. Thus any price offered today will be less than that offered as risk is hopefully reduced through the cycle. Of course if your or the board’s ambition is a multiple of say 3-5 then perhaps an immediate deal could deliver that. Personally this is an all of nothing investment, and all for me is not $5-$10/share. I’ve waited ten years and I’m prepared to wait a few more if the price at that time is a factor of ten greater than it would be today. Of course there’s the ‘bird in the hand’ theory; I’m happy to take the risk and wait for ‘two in the bush’ albeit energy, drive and speed to market are not attributes that would generally be attributed to Reneuron!