"The best shot that BLT has at being taken seriously as a world-class biotechnology company is to start behaving like one. Now that it is NASDAQ-listed, it has no excuses anymore for acting like a bunch of
bogons. That means thinking carefully about it’s communication strategy (and start by getting a decent US communications firm that might have a shot at making the “Boyz from Balmain” look a little more sophisticated). It means less continuous disclosure and PR buffoonery (like
trading halt requests prior to a fully disclosed offering), and it means building a credible mass of clinical evidence before making statements to the public. We don’t want to hear any more crap about a patient being dosed – we want to hear meaningful clinical outcomes articulated on at least a cohort basis, if not a study basis.
Fundamentally, however, I think it is a sad morning for Australian biotechnology. This is not a success for the industry and it just reminds everyone around the planet how mediocre many (not all, but many) of our companies are. As one analyst colleague of mine (who shall remain nameless) commented this morning, “No wonder US investors start to get wary when guys with corks hanging off their hats turn up trying to sell them the next new blockbuster drug or device.”
Sad but true.
We need to fix this, it’s so unnecessary."
