Ann: Mesoblast Raises US$40 Million, page-12

What a big disappointment!!!!!

I was expecting something in the order of $200 million, announced at the same time as a major partnership deal.

Instead, we got another piecemeal raising, which only raised $40m, which will be gone in another 1.5 quarter.

MSB needs to address the funding issue once and for all, so that it can focuses on delivering its trials and not having to worry about where the next quarter's funding is going to come from.

So far this financial year, it has raised twice, increasing its number of shares by 12.6%.

12.6% doesn't sound much, but if this keeps going on, it does add up and whether we like it or not, it makes the goals of $10 or $40 that are much talked about, slightly harder to achieve.

This time last year, MSB only had 380 million shares, after this latest raising it will have about 428 million shares. Those who keep saying that MSB doesn't have a lot of shares on issue need to understand that no matter MSB likes it or not, one way or another, it has to keep issuing shares in order to keep the lights on.

A big bang raising that I personally advocate involves issuing a lot of new shares in one go. But at least with this method, management doesn't have to waste its precious time worrying about this kind of financial matter.

The other approach, which is what MSB has been doing this financial year, is raising a little bit of money every quarter. This distracts management from the main game of delivering scientific results and it erodes confidence in the company.

Either way, shares on issue will keep going up. If this trend of issuing about 20-25 million shares every quarter continues, expect total number of shares on issue to reach 500 million by the end of this calendar year!