Ann: AGM - Chairman address and CEO presentation, page-26

I asked about investor communication, saying that as retail investors we are not privy to any of the investor catch ups and are totally reliant on their communications. I mentioned that we suffer from the way the stock is traded and we rely on the information they provide to make our decisions.
1-I understand there are external factors that set back timeframes
2-I understand that they can’t control Astrazenica or Aspen
BUT when the facts change, can the shareholder guidance change?

This was poorly received! “Do you want updates every 2 or 3 weeks” from JF and a perplexed/exasperated “there are continuous disclosure obligations” from the chairman. And more reiteration that they focus on the important stuff etc.

My view is that they take an arrogant/intolerant view and as long as they are managing their business to their own satisfaction, then updating shareholders is not viewed as being important. Keeping us up to date is not important. They don’t care if they miss timeframes because they’re “not going to compromise a good launch for the first launch”.

The Aspen launch which was a big deal last agm was heavily downplayed today, as if they were irritated that we are even bothering them about it because “Australia is 1% of the world’s pharma market”.

Some other tidbits:
-The US market for vivagel is 55x larger than Australia
-They are keen to license their products at “proof of concept”stage and leave the later stages to the multinationals
-1200 women have trialled vivagel
-Aspen have been talking to pharmacies or the pharmacy society prior to the launch but they can’t launch in Australia over Christmas because pharmacies won’t accept products that aren’t Christmas related.

Anyway. Enough of the griping and the tidbits. The bottom line is that Starpharma are working on some deals that are massive in size. IMO, so better not to worry about the smaller matters such as the vivagel launches and WHEN the Az trial will start. Definitely don’t bother picking through their updates trying to draw meaning from the nuances in their wording, because they evidently don’t care too much about them and seem to regard shareholder relations as a nuisance. I’d say focus on some of these very big ticket items such as slide 23 “first DEP candidat AZD0466. Starpharma’s tots receipts (milestones + royalties) now estimated to be up to A$2.4B based on increased annual sales projections”

Forgive management their impatient attitude and trust that they are focusing on the biggest opportunities. I hope that when they get a good reputation for success, big pharmas will sign up at proof of concept stage, which could even be at mouse model stage or stage 1 - that remains to be seen. She did say that the big pharmas would pick it up from the later stages.

All imo.