News should have read: "Biotron Announces a Claytons trial. The trial you have when you can't afford to have a trial."
Lets be honest. Biotron set some significant expectations for the market but its now obvious that they have been unable to meet those expectations due to funding, or more specifically lack thereof. Today's announcement appears to be an attempt to tick some boxes by announcing a human Covid trial without actually being able to deliver a trial which even comes close to the expectations which they themselves set when they told the market "With this guidance and acceptable trial design in hand, the Company will now determine its capital requirements for the COVID-19 clinical program and seek funding from potential partners and non-equity funding sources".
I'm pretty damned sure this isn't the "acceptable trial design" which they mentioned after they received the FDA feedback. Its also very clear that this also isn't based on "funding from potential partners and non-equity funding sources" either. So what the hell happened?
Its been over 2 years since they announced to the market that they were selecting a candidate for their Covid-19 program. Cash is running out and unfortunately the HIV trials are delayed yet again, as many trials are. They know that they need to go to market and ask for more money but the carrots that they need to provide in the form of good news and hope are simply out of reach right now and they are obviously very worried about the market reaction to doing a CR in the current environment particularly having recently delayed everything until well into 2023. However, delaying has backfired in this instance.
The annual report and AGM are coming up soon. As is the quarterly. They are expecting a bun fight and its likely that this "news" is an attempt to reset expectations beforehand quite simply because its getting very difficult to pretend that they are going to be able to run a proper Covid trial anytime soon and having to face people at the AGM and dance around this issue is beyond contemplation.
Its possible that the company is also frustrated by the exaggeration around here. It was never going to be possible for most of these "wishes and dreams" to be fulfilled. The company didn't do themselves any favors with the expectations that they set but a small number of HC users have taken this to a whole new level and this announcement shows these to be what they are.
So what do we now know:
- Non-equity funding for this trial ...... never happened.
- Trial design based on FDA feedback ..... no time soon
- Expectations for any good news ..... Q2 2023 ish
- Meaningful BIT225 human Covid data ...... no time frame given but well into 2023 at best
For months there has been endless speculation about the mystery benefactor who was going to fund a proper trial. Some here were 150% (out of 100) sure that it was a done deal. In fact one poster even stated that it was "ridiculous" for anybody to be stupid enough to say otherwise. But this is the internet. Full of useful "facts".
But now for the good news. Some people thought today's announcement was so great that 4mil shares have changed hands at briefly inflated prices. Ironically this is the highest number since the May 30 announcement which set the expectations as to what we would all be reading in today's announcement.
Anyway, nothing lost except any chance of meaningful Covid data any time soon. HIV data next year will be exciting for all of us and hopefully BIT225 produces better results that the trial design presented here today. Now the question is purely when the capital raising will be.
