A FujiFilm competitor had to came out of left field due to an unusual trading of late in Cynata's securities. Gotta appreciate the irony in this.
Only thing they forgot to mention in that list is the European Patent issue announcement back in April. The market always goes ballistic when we get one of them. Almost as exciting as the poster presentations. Anyways, I'm just a blogger (is that what you call someone posting on HC?)
My $2... I mean 2 cents FWIW:
FujiFilm has been very comfortable with their initial license option agreement for various reasons:
- both Cellular Dynamics (now FujiFilm Cellular Dynamics) and Cynata originating from UW-Madison
- both technologies exclusively licensed from WARF
- CDI providing the iPSC starting material for Cynata's iPSC derived MSCs
- Cynata's iPSC derived MSCs so far have only been tested (in pre-clinical and in our world-first clinical trial) using CDI's iPS cells
- FujiFilm has been our major shareholder for quite a long time and has only been pushed into second place when Fidelity appeared on the register
- FujiFilm has so far been the only party willing to enter into a licence option agreement for our lead product CYP-001 in one disease target (GvHD), together with certain other perks (manufacturing, "certain other rights")
FujiFilm told the Japanese press back in September and October of last year about their upcoming P2 clinical trial in Japan, aiming to become the first company to conduct an iPSC clinical trial on home ground:
https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/going-forward.4444981/page-31?post_id=35779949https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/going-forward.4444981/page-184?post_id=36045213Their managers suddenly started talking about us in interviews as well:
Ken-ichiro Hata, Deputy Director,BioScience & TechnologyDevelopment Center, Fujifilm Corporation Japan TissueEngineering Co., Ltd. (J - TEC)Representative Director and President (
https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/going-forward.4444981/page-362?post_id=36961943)
Junji Okada, Director, Corporate VP & GM of Corporate Planning Headquarters and Pharmaceuticals Products Divs.,FUJIFILM Holdings Corporation (
https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/going-forward.4444981/page-475?post_id=37141538)
FujiFilm started to get ready, even investing US$21mio into a new manufacturing plant for FCDI:
https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/going-forward.4444981/page-446?post_id=37027451It could have all been one of these happily-ever-after stories, until FujiFilm discovered that some structural aspects don't quite suit their commercialisation plans and therefore chose not to pay up, until everyone in their HQ (President to janitor) was happy with the exact wording in both English and Japanese:
https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/going-forward.4444981/page-1387?post_id=39475837And this is now where the tables seems to have turned now.
Management IMO has tried a few times before to make a point (more or less successful):
- diluting their holding below 10% straight after appearing on the register with a holding of just over 10% (January 2017)
- riding on the back of a glamorous Celularity US$250 series A financing deal to a secret meet & greet dinner with FujiFilm in Tokyo in February 2018 (https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/ipos-and-valuations.4054876/page-11?post_id=31464370), only to have FujiFilm calling their bluff (yes, world's longest MoU)
- the "no-christmas-card" message in New York shortly after the extension was announced (March 2019)
Except this time there is someone willing to put their hand up with a first bid - and it is NOT FujiFilm.
Where to go from here?
FujiFilm's reputation after all that media circus above is on the line, and we know how important it is for them to save face.
As stated by others before, FujiFilm have not walked away from their Licence Option agreement. Being material news, Cynata would have had to announce it. Therefore until we get such asx announcement, nothing has changed - except that there is now another big Japanese elephant in the room. Damn... wish I could have seen their faces when they got told that Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma is interested (enough) to have it announced on the asx.
The asx announcement made it quite clear that other discussions with certain parties in relation to making a proposal (not a/the licence option agreement) have since ceased - at least for now. Perhaps this has happened because FujiFilm thought it could be another bluff and it therefore may never see the light of day. If it wasn't for the asx price query, perhaps it wouldn't have. Yet here we are!
Whilst it is an indicative, non-binding proposal, Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma has the facilities and know-how to our platform all the way - and FujiFilm knows it, too.
SDP built the "world's first facility dedicated to the commercial manufacture of regenerative medicine and cell therapy products derived from allogeneic iPS cells" back in March 2018:
https://www.ds-pharma.com/ir/news/2018/20180301-3.htmlThey are committed to invest in start-ups in order to speed up the commercialisation of cell therapy, announcing it to be one of their main projects, willing to invest big within the next three years according to their Corporate Business Plan web meeting from March 2019:
https://www.irwebmeeting.com/sumitomo-chem/vod/20190312/r38wszp9/19_21_cbp_en/index.htmlTogether with Hitachi, they have co-developed, and in March 2019 installed the first cell mass culture equipment in Japan:
"This equipment is the first equipment in Japan which has the necessary functions to comply with the Japanese regulation, GCTP (Good Gene, Cellular, and Tissue-based Products Manufacturing Practice) and can be used to culture automatically a mass of iPS cells for clinical use".
http://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/month/2019/03/190311.pdfThis Hitachi announcement is full of goodies and worth a read.
FujiFilm could now potentially also face a problem with their plans to "mass-produce mesenchymal stem cells made from iPS cells, prepare them as pharmaceuticals, and market them to medical institutions and others":
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Fujifilm-to-use-stem-cells-to-fight-leukemia-therapy-complicationsI highly doubt that FujiFilm would walk away with its tail between its legs after apparently making good progress with Japanese authorities to start their planned P2 trial in Japan, potentially missing out on the iPS-MSC manufacturing opportunity for $2 per share.
We finally have our competitive tension and $2 is only the beginning.
To put the $2 bid into perspective:
Back in September 2014, Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma and SanBio reached a Joint Development and License Agreement for Gen1 allogeneic bone marrow derived MSC product for ONE disease target (stroke) and ONLY for North America, willing to pay
- US$6 mio initial payment
- US$74 mio milestone payments
- up to a total of US$125mio sales milestone payments
That makes it up to US$205 mio:
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sumitomo-dainippon-pharma-and-sanbio-conclude-joint-development-and-license-agreement-for-north-america-over-sb623-therapy-for-stroke-277182761.htmlI'm sure they are fully aware that there is now way they can snatch up a Gen2 allogeneic iPS derived MSC PLATFORM for AU$200 mio. But hey, no harm in trying, right
Btw, the trial failed its mid-stage study (January 2019):
https://www.ds-pharma.com/ir/news/2019/20190129.htmlHere are two examples of a bare minimum price to actually start the negotiations:
I understand the concerns of some on here regarding management, but there is an easy way out of it:
getting all likeminded but independent investors to discuss (with respect) and agree on at least a ballpark figure.
The loans have shown that the "small fry" is a force to be reckoned with. Neither FujiFilm, nor Sumitomo Dainippon get an April Fools bid through without our (combined) approval.
No matter how you have voted before on any previous AGM resolution, we are now all in the same boat!
Very, very exciting times ahead for CYP investors!
Feel free to contact me if you want to have a chat regarding the above.
(Rather than repeating my previous comments, I decided to simply post the link. Otherwise I would have had to spend the whole weekend to finish my... blog.)
(20min delay)