You in
bold:
Please list the KPI's for the past two years?I can't. I don't think any shareholders can.
And that's a key problem in my opinion.
Shareholders aren't told what the KPIs are ahead of time and even in the rear view mirror (in the remuneration section of annual reports) we are only told that cash bonus were awarded for meeting or part meeting them but we are not told what they were for.
This is a quote from page 29 of the remuneration section of the annual report
"Allocation of cash bonuses isdetermined by attainment of short and medium termKPIs which are considered to be important drivers ofvalue and typical within the biotechnology industryfor a company at Cynata’s stage of development.For example, achievement of specified development,clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones.
Theseamounts are payable subsequent to 30 June 2022." So in the case of something like a MEND trial it seems logical that milestones would have been set internally, (probably by Ross as MD perhaps with input from others) and probably would be something like first patient treated, or DSMB report received, or human ethics clearance by institution received, but they weren't explicitly disclosed nor mentioned to shareholders as being KPIs.
The problem of course with this approach is that it allows for errors in planning (or poor KPI choices) to never be reported. If for instance the MEND trial was born and running dead through poor design planning - milestones could have been hit for things like first patient recruited etc that weren't actually ever going to lead to value because the results even when they come in at the end had we managed to recruit would have been confounded anyway- and the shareholders would never be told that there were design flaws until potential partners being unhappy with the persuasiveness of the data might have suggested it.
Similar poor planning (and poor KPI choices) might be repeated in GvHD producing similar milestone payments that similarly might not actually add value.
A mistake with GvHD might be to commence a trial and set up milestone payments on first patient recruited etc without ever having done a proper feasibility study to ensure that 60 patients could be obtained in a timely fashion first.
Its the lack of transparency that really hurts shareholders in this. Without transparency over the KPIs when non-value adding KPI are chosen (poor KPI choices) shareholders can't even see that.
I understood the details of the KPI's to be matter discussed and known only to the BoDs and the individual receiving the KPI's?I think this misses the importance of the Managing Director (also CEO) specifically, in the process. Its probably mostly Ross that sets the KPIs.
This excerpt is from the Corporate Governance Statement for this year - released at the same time as the Annual Report. Its obtainable from the CYP website.
As per 1.7
"The Company has an annual performance review process in place for is Managing Director and other senior executives. On an annual basis corporate objectives and individual key performance indicators (KPIs) are set.
The Managing Director reviews the performance of senior executives and their delivery of corporate and individual objectives".
I assumed that's the way the CYP SHs liked it?I certainly don't. I don't think any of the more thoughtful poster's like it - its just that individually there is little we feel we can do about it. And organizing to act together is hard.
Back in 2019 I wrote to Ross and Peter Webse noting that -
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the section of the remuneration report headed "
Relationship between the remuneration policy and companyperformance" didn't seem to have changed, then since 2015.
"The boardconsiders that at this time, evaluation of the Group's financialperformance using generally accepted measures such as profitability,total shareholder return or per company comparisonare not relevantas the Group is at an early stage in the implementation of acorporate strategy that includes the development of a novel lifesciences (i.e therapeutic stem cell) manufacturing technology and theidentification and execution of business opportunities as outlined inthe directors report".
Respectfully, thatreads to me like a disclaimer, it reads like a board is making plentyof room for itself to
not be measured against profitability, totalshareholder return or compared with other companies.
But I understandthe purpose of that section as per 300A 1 (b) of the Corps Act 2001is be a discussion of the relationship between the remunerationpolicy and company performance.
I'd hope and expect to see somepositive statements there not just disclaimers. Especially after 5years.
If the board couldgive some thought to next year making a bit more explicit (in thatsection of the Remuneration Report) what good performance would looklike, how it would be correlated with remuneration policy and bonusesetc that would be appreciated.
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In 2022 (3 years later) the section in the remuneration report in the annual report still reads pretty much the same.
We don't see
any positive statements about what the relationship between remuneration policy and company performance
is even now.
(20min delay)