Where are we on a deal?, page-20

Just a couple more verbatims from Paul relating to partnering:

"Our preference would be to have a co-funding partner, so a pharmaceutical company. We are in discussions with a number of companies. We have discussed with those companies the possibility of them assisting with the funding. They may fund the bulk of that, or they may fund a component of that and then the remainder come from other partnering deals that we might have in regional areas such as China or South America, and that money contributes to a total pot of being able to fund it via partnerships, as opposed to going back to investors and offering them equity. Given the low share price, our preference is not to go back to the market, but we have to do what we have to do to get the money to keep the program running."

- Paul Rennie to Alan Kohler July 2024

"As Beverly said [in her AGM presentation], we are very confident that we will bring a deal home by June 2024. And i'm sure if we don't there'll be plenty of people in the audience who'll remind me at the next AGM. So, the pressure is on. We understand that, but we want a deal more than you can imagine, more that what investors want, we want to be able to get commercial companies seeing exactly what we're seeing in terms of the tremendous value that this brings to the market of treating osteoarthritis."

- AGM, November 2023

They clearly felt confident at the end of 2023 that they'd get FDA clearance in early 2024 and have a deal signed by EOFY24. They were overly-optimistic on the timelines for that FDA clearance. Almost a year later we have only just received feedback/guidance from the Agency to inform the submission of the revised protocol. The good news, is that the feedback was positive and appears highly acceptable to the company, and highly workable. The full clearance in now potentially only weeks away, with a 30 day nervous wait after submission, which could be any day now, or could take weeks more (we don't really know). The FDA will do what they do, and it's nobody elses fault but PARs for giving the market such optimistic guidance which they ultimately could not meet - but nonetheless, the bullishness of the language around confidence in a deal still encourages. And as harsh as I like to be on PAR management (given the errors of the past) I do appreciate that not having FDA clearance yet is a reasonable cause for subsequently missing that timeline. I don't see any reason why that bullishness is not all still there, and ready to return with vigour, once the green light eventually comes (which i'm confident it will).