mercer should go..., page-13

Kos -- I'm laying off TIS bashing at moment, but felt I had to respond to your comment. I do accept that Dr Mercer and his team are working very hard to get VG to market and I accept that their interests are aligned with investors. AS an investor, I have done the research on VG and I truly believe it will be very successful. There are however a few shareholders (and I would include myself in this category) who believe that communication with investors has been woeful to date.

Kos you say "Your comments seem to indicate that you have put yourself in a corner with your own expectations! I know I did - but I have to live with that and blame myself and not the company."

Now, if an investor builds up expectations relying on nothing but his/her own hopes and rumours, I would agree that he/she has only themselves to blame.

The difficulty I have ( and I suspect a few others as well) is that there have been quite a few announcements from TIS that have built up these expectations, not just once, but several times. I'm talking here in particular about about "imminent" commercial deals and now, the CE mark.

Now, I am very positive that this will all turn out very well in the end, but the company really needs to look at what it says (and doesnt say) to investors (and potential investors). It should not be building up expectations in the way it has in the past. It needs to qualify its statements when it gives timeframes. It should be occasionally monitoring investor forums such as HC to see if any unreal expectations are building up and "prick the balloon" by making some form of statement if people are starting to assume something that is not going to happen.

I totally disagree with other posters on this forum that it should be benchmarking itself against other biotechs who (so I am told) rarely meet timeframes or other KPIs they set for themselves. What management should be doing, as far as investor relations is concerned, is having frank dialogues with investors about where we are at and where we expect to be. It is about striking a rapport and having a conversation with investors. and before I have people jumping down my throat-- no it doesn't cost a fortune in either time or money. It is really about attitude.

I have spoken to a few people at TIS over the last few weeks to gauge what is going on. I do get the strong impression that they are very positive and things will unfold well soon. The thing is they need to be having this sort of dialogue with all investors. As I have said before, with technology today, this can be readily done via their website with investor updates, blogs, online/phone conference investor updates. In many ways, by doing this, they would save time, because they wouldnt have to be doing one on one investor reassurances.

Anyway, some musings on a stunning sunday morning...

Good luck to all for teh coming week.