As a callow youth, my first boss used to regale me with stories...

As a callow youth, my first boss used to regale me with stories of how he used to operate when first starting out and cashflow was tight. One of his favourite “tricks” was to send out a cheque to a creditor in the post unsigned. It then had to be sent back by post to rectify the missing signature “mistake” and with his use of 2nd class post could give him an extra week or two of credit. Although this was over 40 years ago, that memory surfaced at the latest announcement that our BLA was with the publisher.
When the history of Mesoblast is written, we may get an honest account of the real reasons behind the rather “elastic” timeframes the company worked to. If we do I expect the fingerprints of the FDA will be all over it.
Silviu has had to negotiate, manage, cajole and at times bluff his way through the past few years to get to the point where he can say it’s with the publishers. Every i and t have been dotted and crossed (or in honour of my old boss, the cheque has been signed) and provided the publisher’s press is well oiled and filled with enough paper a 100,000 odd pages of all our hopes and dreams will be either winging its way to the FDA “goods in” entrance or already be there. We will find out shortly whether they will announce the day of delivery or wait for the day of acceptance which I believe is a 2 week timescale we will have to wait and see.
I have heard that stock markets pricing looks forward about 18 months. If you are a LTH then it is because you believe in the data and that the potency assay is “reasonable”. If so then to “adapt” a phrase from a CEO well known to us, we can look forward to a “momentous” 18 months. There is no getting around that approval for SRGvHD has to be granted, but it’s a high risk high reward business and I truly believe that the past few years and the work done by Mesoblast has reduced that risk to a level that reflects the 4 year data on survival for SRGvHD.
So the cheque is signed and finally in the post. @gerzensee in his psychology of Trading post raised the interesting point of given the history of the company, how people will deal with the “time to sell” conundrum. We will all have our own requirements but my thoughts are not to look 18 months ahead but at least 36. Momentum when it starts on this company is going to be rather exciting to be part of, as the question we all invested to have answered, is how big is that cheque going to be?
The next announcement should be labelled price sensitive at last.
But today it is all about the North London Derby.
Regards Yelrom
PS Come on you Gunners!