IMU (ASX) Ann: Results of Meeting Percentages

Originally posted by fourdollars ↑

Been pondering this one. Its such a strange outcome.

The speculation on this site about a potential conflict of interest / impediment to BP deal in having Axel on the Board has no credibility. At the end of the day, our Directors unanimously recommended that shareholders vote in favour of Axel's re-election, and we have to believe that they would be across an issue as important as IMU's attractiveness to BP.

I also think that speculation that it was the "3 strategic, cornerstone investors" that voted him off is wide of the mark. They were awarded what turned out to be half-price shares by Hopper just a few months ago. Find it hard to believe that they would turn around and bite the hand that feeds them at the first opportunity.

So was the vote against Axel specifically or was it against the Board (read Hopper, since its decisions are basically his)?

I'm leaning to the latter. Axel is clearly a valuable scientific resource, well-connected in the industry and seems like he would provide well-reasoned counsel. Why would there be a protest vote against Hopper? There are a few reasons (needless to say, none of which will be supported by the fan club, but I'm speculating on behalf of the 1.056 billion votes that don't post here):

1. the award of 94m shares to Hopper after missing the FDA deadline. I know, what's in 24 hours? The thing is that the milestone for which he was rewarded is just a step along the path. All subsequent milestones will be missed, and this is potentially the irritation to shareholders (not the 24 hours). Its a bit like rewarding someone for getting to their connecting flight 10 minutes late. The 10 mins isn't a big deal, but missing the connecting flight is.

2. The award of discounted shares to the unnamed investors.

3. Disappointment with the path being taken with HER-Vaxx (ie launching 3-4 additional trials, 8 years after purchasing the technology), none of which are registrational at this stage.

4. Disappointment with the Merck / Pfizer deal. The recent ROTH report notes the following: "the trial is randomised for the presence or absence of BAVENCIO rather than HER-Vaxx, and therefore will draw more of a conclusion about BAVENCIO's added benefit than HER-Vaxx's added benefit." Maybe some shareholders believe IMU has been out-strategised ... Is IMU effectively paying millions for a clinical trial of BAVENCIO and all Merck / Pfizer have had to do is chip in a few hundred thousand dollars worth of product (the $4m is malarky, we all know that the gross margin on these drugs is north of 80%).

All speculation.

I also wondered why (if it was a protest against the Board rather than Axel) the protesting shareholders didn't vote down the remuneration report (although there were quite a few votes cast against it). But the reality is that voting down a remuneration report is symbolic. Voting off a director shows proper intent.

I reckon the Board (Hopper) knew it was coming. The highly-polished newsletter released just one business day after the AGM, already had Axel removed from the list of Directors. They knew it was coming, but too late to mount an initiative to garner shareholder support for Axel. They only needed 200m of the 4 billion uncast votes to retain Axel, but didn't send any correspondence in this regard. Very unusual. When a Board that supports a director gets wind of a potential coup, they usually send correspondence to all shareholders explaining that they "understand some destabilising elements are at play" and outline the reasons shareholders should support the incumbent.

There's no doubt that the protesting shareholders had previously approached the Board with its concerns. Its not in their interests to embarrass the IMU Board and create uncertainty for existing and potential investors.

Is there a reason the remaining directors can't issue some sort of statement? After all, their recommendation has been ignored. Something along the lines of "we understand that some shareholders had concerns with Axel / a company direction etc ... and this has manifested in a vote against his re-election. We want to assure shareholders that the direction we are taking is in the best interests of the company for these reasons xxxxx."

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"I reckon the Board (Hopper) knew it was coming. The highly-polished newsletter released just one business day after the AGM, already had Axel removed from the list of Directors."

I think you are reading too much into that. The newsletter is digital. So any amendment can be done in seconds/minutes.

As for the rest, your speculations sounds as good as my speculations