Q&A With VTI Chairman
Dr David J. Mazzo, Ph.D.is an experienced pharmaceutical executive and strategic leader. He is currently Chairman of the Board of Visioneering Technologies, Inc.(ASX:VTI) and a Director of Feldan Therapeutics. Dr. Mazzo has experience working in multicultural and multilingual environments in the USA, Canada, Europe and Asia; is a seasoned public and private company director; has held executive positions in research and development (R&D) at large multinational companies; and CEO positions in emerging pharmaceutical companies. He is recognized for his exceptional strategic, scientific and regulatory expertise, upon which he has amassed a track record of more than35 years of successful global product development, registration and launches.
Can you explain how you are connected to and/or working with VTI?
I joined the Board of Directors of VTI in late February 2020 as Chairman of the Board based on my assessment of the potential of VTI to have growing success in the area of pediatric myopia progression control, an area of tremendous unmet medical need throughout the world. Under our current organization, I am providing strategic oversight to our excellent executive operational team with the two goals of continuing to grow our business in terms of revenues, market share and geographic reach, and completing a randomized clinical trial of our soft contact lens to confirm our belief that these are the best lens available for pediatric myopia control.
In your own words, can you explain why VTI’s novel product range, and continued R&D, is so important?
Pediatric myopia is a major unmet medical need around the world and I believe VTI’s contact lens offer an effective, if not the best, solution for controlling progression of this disease. Of course, one approach may not be best for every potential patient, so it is important to stay abreast of new developments in technologies to control myopia progression and to be actively involved in their development. It is also optimum to be able to provide a full spectrum of control solutions to ECPs such as spectacles, soft-lens (like our current products) and orthokeratology. Continued R&D efforts including conducting clinical trials and designing new lens will allow VTI to maintain and grow its market position in this important area.
In your opinion, what are some of the things that are needed to support VTI’s continued market reach and patient impact?
In my opinion, there are two ‘markets’ about which VTI must be concerned. The obvious first market is the market comprising ECPs and patients. Here VTI needs to continue to expand its outreach to practitioners (optometrists) to educate them on the advantages of our product(s) and to keep them informed and excited about new products; and, especially, new data from clinical trials that will increase their confidence in VTI products and result in their increased use. Greater awareness and use amongst ECPs will result in greater patient impact. The second ‘market’ of concern is the financial market which assigns a value to our company. Unfortunately, we are a closely held public company which means that there is very little liquidity in our stock, i.e., there is limited buying or selling on the ASX on a daily basis. This also means that relatively small transactions can have a disproportionate (usually negative) effect on our share price. I believe that shareholders need to view VTI as an ideal type of hybrid - a development company with potentially game-changing data on the horizon that also has growing sales and revenues. Our value is not just some multiple of revenues, but must also include consideration of our growth rate and the potential value of positive R&D efforts and/or BD efforts. In that regard, VTI seems severely undervalued today and, I suggest, represents an investment opportunity with large potential upside in the coming years.
Do you have any particular advocacy messages you would like to share with our valued key stakeholders?
VTI has two main pillars to our near-term strategy over the next 24 months; maintaining and growing revenues to achieve profitability in the coming ~2 years and to execute the PROTECT trial such that 1-year interim data is available bymid-2023. Either of these objectives alone should add significant value to the Company but, taken together, represent a potential watershed moment for VTI in the not too distant future. I ask our investors and, especially, potential investors to compare the rate of revenue growth, the rate of expansion of our products into new markets around the world, our existing real-world data supporting the competitive advantages of our product(s) and, especially, the probability of success and the likely high positive impact of positive one-year data from PROTECT to other companies in our field, and I believe you will conclude that VTI has the potential to return great value to shareholders. I ask that you join us in our quest to be the recognized leader is pediatric myopia progression control to the benefit of literally billions of children around the world.
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