One reason I bought MSB in the first place is it ticked the boxes on insulation from hostile takeover with so many shares in the CEO and other executive hands. That and Thorney which is a white knight with family/friend connections. There are others for sure but MSB is uniquely placed on this front. It's one of the first risks I look at with a bio.
The other risk is related to the vulnerability to takeover Australian biotechs suffer from having insufficient capital to take a sound innovation to market. The research stage is by far the cheapest, development and commercialisation (including FDA trials) is the killer. The deal with Cephalon/Teva backed MSB for at least one application. For a long while it looked like that would expand into other applications, but we are now engaged in discussions with Big Pharma, Celgene, and others for that. For a long time madamswer made a big deal over uncertainty of funding. He was right that Teva haven't backed the rest of the trials (as I'd anticipated) but that doesn't make MSB a wallflower at a dance. Plenty of suitors around. But no perspective on that.
Well spotted on the negative bias. He does get it right on some things, and we get a colossal volume of detail at times, but that doesn't mean the perspective is generally anything but negative. Exceptions are rare.
A classic was the blackout period. As someone who is so well-informed about IPOs and an ex broker I asked why didn't you let us know about the blackout period? (At the time there were demands for the CEO to resign, or issue a statement etc. and there had been silence from the company).
madamswer said: 'I don't have to defend the indefensible'. But it's not about content. That routine IPO-related information that would have helped the forum better understand the company's behaviour and at least partially halted the hysteria. But to do so didn't further the cause so the information was withheld and the hysteria ran some more.
Even though I'd spoken with the CEO very briefly last Monday, I hadn't known about the blackout period and so failed to make the point. Yet I've been accused of posting on behalf of MSB in here!
To me these circumstances each say a lot. But in an environment of fear, subtle points do get overlooked. Again, well spotted.
(20min delay)