A Bright Future Ahead, page-45

Hi all

Just wanted to share a small anecdote on our fearless leader.

One of my wife’s extended family spent his entire career at Merck, in Australia and overseas. Let’s just say he’s done OK and has retired with water views! Anyway, I spoke to him yesterday and asked if he knew the name Marjan Mikel from his Merck days. His response, “Yes indeed - Marjan was a go-getter!” A promising sign indeed.

We chatted a bit more and I shared a snapshot of Respiri’s story, focusing on ~20 years of endless R&D, and the turnaround since late 2019 when MM came on board. Needless to say, none of what I had to say surprised said family member, and when I mentioned the FDA class II device approval, he started asking quite a few more questions! I’ve planted the seed and will see what happens there...

Anyway, this morning I emailed Marjan to say congrats on the FDA approval and also name-drop our mutual acquaintance. Marjan responded inside half an hour and sent me a very pleasant reply. I’d noticed he has been putting his email address and mobile number on investor presentations which seemed a nice touch, so it was doubly impressive to get a response from him the way I did.

The business turnaround and goal-execution that Respiri has seen under MM was one of the key reasons that convinced me to buy in, so to get the extra corroboration from another (senior) Merck employee certainly de-risked things for me. You can have a great product, but if management can’t execute, it counts for little.

So that was very positive - and the email response today from a busy CEO to a fairly small new investor was a very nice touch.

A big thank you to the AFR reporter who put this on my radar!

Cheers
mondy