18th March is the date based on the terms agreed up on in the Development and Commercialisation Partnership Agreement both parties signed in January 2017. It would require an explanation if the deadline was not to be met.
Having said that, it's not the 18th March yet and as such can't be called "delayed". If you pay your phone bill right on the due date, would you see yourself as paying late?
FujiFilm had 2 years to adjust the terms, including the 90 days post CSR. They didn't, therefore I can't see them delaying it within the last few days. All that is due at this stage is a token payment of US$3 mio, which allows them to lock in GvHD as a starting point.
From an investment point of view:
they paid $3.97 mio for 8,088,403 shares. They are currently worth $14.31 mio (SP $1.77). That's a (paper) profit of over $10 mio!
The acquisition of Biogen for US$890 mio will see them amongst the CDMO elite. This article here says the acquisition is "making it the world's second-largest biopharma contract manufacturer after Lonza of Switzerland."
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-deals/Fujifilm-to-buy-Biogen-production-site-for-890mThis is were the manufacturing rights will come in to play.
Remember that FujiFilm has already told their shareholders in December last year that they have "priority negotiation rights regarding introduction of Cynata's pipeline" (
https://www.fujifilmholdings.com/en/pdf/investors/other/ff_presentation_20181206_001.pdf), after telling the Japanese media in September that "It would 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-complications).
Regarding the whole "manufacturing partner" terminology, see here:
https://hotcopper.com.au/threads/going-forward.4444981/page-446?post_id=37027451Putting that into perspective:
Imagine Lonza was to acquire a license from Mesoblast (MSB) for one of their disease targets, and tell the public that they want to mass-produce MSB's cells and market them, which MSB told you will attract further fees...
(20min delay)